Abstract
There is an increasing amount of structure on the Web as a result of modern Web
languages,
user tagging and annotation, and emerging robust NLP tools. These meaningful,
semantic, annotations hold the promise to significantly enhance information
access, by enhancing
the depth of analysis of today’s systems. Currently, we have only started
exploring
the possibilities and only begin to understand how these valuable semantic cues
can be put
to fruitful use. The workshop had an interactive format consisting of keynotes,
boasters and
posters, breakout groups and reports, and a final discussion, which was
prolonged into the
evening. There was a strong feeling that we made substantial progress.
Specifically, each of
the breakout groups contributed to our understanding of the way forward. First,
annotations
and use cases come in many different shapes and forms depending on the domain
at hand,
but at a higher level there are commonalities in annotation tools, indexing
methods, user
interfaces, and general methodology. Second, there is a framework emerging to
view annotation
as (1) a linking procedure, connecting (2) an analysis of information objects
with (3) a
semantic model of some sort, expressing relations that contribute to (4) a task
of interest to
end users. Third, we should look at complex tasks that cannot be comprehensible
articulated
in a few keywords, and embrace interaction both to incrementally refine the
search request
and to explore the results at various stages, guided by the semantic structure.
