using web annotations for asynchronous collaboration around documents
Digital web-accessible annotations are a compelling medium for personal comments and shared discussions around documents. Only recently supported by widely used products, "in-context" digital annotation is a relatively unexamined phenomenon. This paper presents a case study of annotations created by members of a large development team using Microsoft Office 2000-approximately 450 people created 9,000 shared annotations on about 1,250 documents over 10 months. We present quantitative data on use, supported by interviews with users, identifying strengths and weaknesses of the existing capabilities and possibilities for improvement.
use web annotation asynchronicity asynchronous collaboration collaboration documentation digitize personality sharing product paper case studies developer data interviews users capabilities world wide web distributed work context computer mediated communication access