For the project, we each focused on a subset of the theme of ‘a critical history.’ Following our own personal tastes, each member conducted individual research pertaining to their intended focus (e.g. contemporary reception to Melville’s piece, readings from alternative backgrounds). My focus began as the critical interpretation of slave narratives in relationship to the novella but, as my reading progressed, it developed into a more abstract look into how critics have approached the relationship of history and “Benito Cereno” and how Delano’s historical narrative has been progressively undermined by literary readings over the last few decades of criticism. While our annotations should ideally flush out this research, it suffices to summarize that the rising critical awareness of the injustice of slave revolt trials can be seen at play in the frequent omissions and alterations witnessed in Melville’s adaptation of the legal document that concludes the novella. Rather than serving as a ‘true’ interpretation of events, the document has been denigrated by criticism into yet another example of obscurity, power, and race dynamics, only this time being revealed more in our ‘real’ codified histories rather than fictional narratives.

Having time to evaluate the project, I hope I express a shared feeling of greater ease when comparing this product with the audio-book assignment. While, obviously, this assignment required personal effort and a sizable degree of critical thought, the fact that we were ultimately collecting and displaying available research seemed to reduce the critical burden. In creating the audio-book, the sheer question of ‘how?’ seemed to be overwhelming; our decisions would ultimately limit the possibilities of production and possibly entail critical interpretations that we would not be able to divine until likely too late. Yet, for the annotation assignment, one did not feel such a ‘burden of choice.’ True, we were ultimately limiting ourselves with our selections. (What if I had not chosen to use Coulson’s essay on slave narratives? My annotations would have gone a different route. A new edition would have existed.) But, our selections would not limit the reading itself. The benefit of annotations is that they exist in the margins, that they are not direct impediments to our traditional routes of reading but, rather, accessories for the reader to use, or not use, as they may.

Complementing this relief was our selection of publishing: we decided to use Manifold for our annotations. As the application hides annotations and resources until a user chooses to engage with them, our annotations took on a more laissez faire aspect. What if the critical insights I provided were haphazard? The reader can simply ignore. What if someone knew a critical argument that made this theory unfounded? They could simply reply. Such an ephemeral nature of annotation, while understandably open to abuse in a public setting, relieved even the financial and personal costs of a traditional annotated edition. It permitted us the freedom to simply “play” with the readings of the text, comfortable that we were simply engaging, not providing definitive readings.

It’s hard to throw a polished hatchet around without hitting someone familiar with Marshall McLuhan’s line that the medium is the message. And our group began this project thinking that Medium would be our medium. We loved it for its unstuffy, modern feel that invited conversation—real social reading. But, our lens for the project was critical responses over time, a focus perhaps better suited to a more intentionally academic platform. After a brief experiment with MIT’s Annotation Studio (which had some useful hypothes.is-esque features such as tagging), we found Manifold—a gem of a close-reading environment largely fashioned by CUNY’s Digital Initiatives group. We loved it for its elegant design, ease of annotation, and, perhaps more vital to our intent, the ability to connect multimedia resources both directly in the text as well as outside of it.

Looking to uncover a broad swath of critical opinions, we each chose interest-driven angles such as Travis’s legal slant and Patrick’s psychological one. Culling responses from 1856 to 2014, our annotations formed something of a social dialogue over time, revealing as much about the critics as the story itself. The responses sometimes differed radically with one another challenging the seemingly authoritative nature criticism and suggesting, perhaps, that, just like reader marginalia reveals much about its writer, so too critical responses reveal much about the critic’s times—not a ground-breaking thought, but one brought to the fore through our process.

Both our individual choices of what critical strands to follow and the critical responses themselves hearkened to Schact’s thoughts about power of collaborative annotation that can “build community, empower students to speak, and underscore the inherently collective nature of creativity and interpretation.” Our findings also supported Barthes’ ideas in that the Text generated by Benito Cereno across these 160 years truly has a unique relationship with the sign: the relationship between Melville’s signifiers and the seemingly signified changed significantly through the decades. The sheer variety of critical responses suggests that this Text has unlimited symbolic, stretching even beyond the knowledge base of Melville who both did not directly understand the Muslim identity of the slaves about which he wrote and could not have had a 20^th-century understanding of mental illness or queer theory.

My particular focus, driven by our in-class discussions, was to investigate black and white responses for different audiences over time: an 1856 review in a women’s magazine under a female editor, a white man writing for the New York Times in 1927, an African-American critic writing in the Journal of Negro History in 1956, and Greg Grandin and Toni Morrison writing in the Nation in 2014.

Two of those responses were particularly profound, both on their own and juxtaposed. The first was from Herbert L. Matthews, the white, male reviewer writing in May of 1927 for the Times who was giddy about the publication of a new, stand-alone edition of Benito Cereno, complete with powerful illustrations. Matthews pitches the story solely as a thrilling, maritime mystery, not once mentioning anything about race despite the illustration that accompanied the article: an exaggerated image of a knife-wielding, mid-revolt slave, with others menacingly in the background. While slavery, at that point, had been legally abolished for over 40 years, the Times had since been covering the legacy of enslavement: horrific accounts of lynchings and the push for anti-lynching legislation. In fact, it had covered such topics over 20 times in 1927 in the months before Matthews’ review. His blindness to the racial dimensions of the plot, let alone the undercurrent and context of the tale, is fairly astounding. As a critic, Matthews is, in many ways, Delano—a perhaps well-intended liberal missing the reality of racial struggle around him.

In sharp contrast, Sidney Kaplan, an African-American male writing thirty years later for the Journal of Negro History, not only addresses the racial implications of the story, but takes head-on Melville’s culpability in perpetuating a dehumanized view of the black world. Kaplan points to Melville’s decision to elevate to near martyrdom the real-life, and by legal reports, morally bankrupt Cereno, kowtowing more to a public fear of slave insurrections than to whatever abolitionist tendencies he might have displayed in Moby Dick. Though literally a century separated their writing, Kaplan and Melville both were writing a decade before decisive events in American racial history, and both experienced the fomenting struggles. In such a parallel time, and while still praising Melville’s writerly craft, Kaplan indicts Melville as a near contemporary. For a tale that in many senses ends with the words “the negro,” BC’s reception by the Journal of Negro History, is both aware of Melville’s text and context, as well as its own, and that awareness makes the conviction all the more poignant.

The wide range of critical responses begs the question, who is the implied reader of Melville’s text? A commercially desirable one? One who, like the Times reviewer, is hungry for a good mystery regardless of moral implication (which, by its original serialization in 1855’s holiday season, certainly seems plausible) ? One who is looking for a political commitment, just years before the Civil War, to either abolition or enslavement? One looking for a lesson on human nature, like those in the tales of ancient storytellers? More than what’s truly going on in the San Dominick, that may be the real mystery of Benito Cereno.

To see our project, make an account at https://cuny.manifoldapp.org

Katharina asked the very useful question last week, after I suggested that one or both groups might choose a substitute for the planned Billy Budd: what makes for a good text to play via Ivanhoe? Here are some thoughts on that score:

• you can “play” virtually any fictional narrative (or even historical event, legal debate, etc.): as long as there are an array of different personae to inhabit, the play will work.
• shorter is better: in my experience, the game works best in groups of 4-7, to allow for a range of different personae and to give a sense of the text as a whole. As I joked in class, Russian “doorstop” novels have too many characters and too much plot complexity to work well. Novella-length is great, given the time constraints.
• public-domain is always nice but less necessary here: we are transforming these texts and thus can “publish” our work in the open under “fair use.” So the only downside is the expense, potentially, of getting your hands on an in-copyright text.
• interesting publication history: if you dig deeply enough, almost any text has a rich publication history on some level, but it’s nice to think about texts that occasioned some kind of vivid debate, or had unusual itineraries through the publication process, or otherwise teach us something about the production/consumption/distribution of texts.
• As I mentioned in class, the Bedford Cultural Edition series has a few 19thC texts that have rich publication histories, are of manageable length, and are chock-full of the kinds of cultural materials that would enhance your play.

For an example, check out the site in which my honors course at Hunter played Charles Chesnutt’s The Conjure Tales last term. As you can see, both teams played the same text but with different emphases and different “paratextual” characters. The fun of the game emerges through the interactions, in which players, much as in improvised music or theater or dance, have to listen to one another in order for their expressions to mesh with the whole. Of course your play will look very different, but I think these students did great things with the project.

Just at the beginning of his article, Jones points out “as long as there has been writing, there have been readers who follow along and ‘write back.’” It caught my attention sent me to Blair’s discussion of note-taking and her reference to linking it to different forms of communication and inscription (newspapers, diaries, lecture notes,) and Bush’s argument that note-taking’s primary use is in referencing and informing discussion. We have followed these principals in our use of hypothes.is, and we’ve discussed how our social annotation creates a dialogue, and a Barthesian reading through writing. Because the nature of annotation as presented by all as a dialogue, I was prompted to think of how annotation intersects with the epistolary genre. The most obvious is that their primary medium shares a signifier, “note,” as well as in the corporeal acts required to create them—the typing to function “memex,” and the friction of pen on paper—but more so that correspondence is inherent to both genres.

The two genres share a distinct relationship with transmission and documentation. Blair’s piece is ultimately concerned with transmission, and she addresses that the “note” in “note-taking” is one that is grounded in a desire to converse with a text or an author, and that the desire to read other people’s annotations—typically scholars or experts—is useful in informing the reader of conversations, albeit fragmented ones. While she addresses that these are pragmatic, academic uses (more akin to “memex” in Bush), what sets note-taking apart is “thought and expression” and “personal memory on paper” (99,106). This deeply human aspect doesn’t at all deviate from the epistolary genre: texts are often written ephemerally; they are fragmented both in writing, and historically, in lagging or interrupted delivery; authors pick and choose what they wish to address based on the content of interest from the initial letter; and they represent conversation between one author and another who’s natural and required response to reading is writing in return. Furthermore, their mediums share a signifier: the “note” can be the scribble in a margin, a grocery list, a telegram, a diary entry, or a letter. Blair uses the terms “thought and expression” and “personal memory on paper” to describe note-taking, but in my opinion they fit in even more organically with letter-writing, or perhaps note-making.

This emphasizes the call-and-response nature of the note, but also the note’s form as being both independent of, but intimately linked to the text is responds to. I first think of archives of letters which may only have one side of the correspondence. In this situation, lacking the other half doesn’t render them null, but rather emphasizes the role of response as a valid and fulfilling means of approaching a given text. Another example are annotation editions of texts; Ulysses Annotated does not contain the written prose of Joyce’s novel, but rather dedicates the pages solely to dissecting the book’s allusions in its own separate body. This publication comes off not as inherently epistolary but as one with coded language, saying to Joyce, “hey, we figured your riddles,” and separately to its compatriots in reading Joyce, “we got your back.” These independent bodies of annotation slide into Bush’s examination of the “record” and the role of the machine in storage and transmission. In these cases, the note itself becomes the archive of conversation. But the engineered machines that Bush conceives of with “memex” technology is actually better suited for the longer-form, independent, more epistolary note-making rather than the marginal annotation. In my experience, at least, it’s pretty difficult to annotate on a computer without additional programs (like hypothes.is) which allow you to do so—and it’s worth pointing out that programs devised by this construction are, in themselves, a practice in notation through a language of codes written between electric signals.

Creating this metaphor for myself continued to solidify the conversations we’ve been having around social annotation both as a way of communicating with a text and author, as well as with each other. Blair’s mention of the diary format, an epistolary medium, for note-taking against the robotic and photo-textual methods in Bush against the contemporary and pragmatic suggestions in Jones emphasized communication among texts and readers as critical to comprehension. The differences across them reminded me of the non-teleological nature of note-taking as it is embodied by any style of notation—hypothes.is or (oftentimes) letter writing. It also causes me to wonder what value it might be to approach annotation as a project in more literal letter-writing (though, I guess that’s what we are doing in [what Jones would agree are useful] blog posts)—framing annotations as directed explicitly toward the author, the text, other readers, and myself as figures that will respond and converse based off of contributions and engagement, as opposed to the single-word side note, symbol, highlight, or other scribble.

For this week’s reading I centered my thoughts on Jason B. Jones, “There are No New Directions in Annotations”, with particular interest to how public/digital annotation carries on a tradition of learning pedagogy and comprehension of literary materials, whilst also balancing the responsibility of digital pedagogy, an action described by Jones as “the critical approach to canonical  work”. How can (if possible) these two polarizing notions meld and encourage students to feel more empowered in the classroom?

While idealistic in his argument, what Jones does not consider are the systemic silencers that have historically pushed marginalized voices away from feeling represented in the classroom and learning process. To collaborate in such formats might encourage deconstruction of texts within the traditional literary cannon, but does not consider students as independent creators of knowledge. It also does not consider the social construction involved in collaborating to offer bodies of knowledge that has historically been left out of consideration into academic settings. How do we being to plant the seeds to empower students to feel voiced in the classroom in an way that engages with positive deviance?  To be able to achieve the goals Jones describes, would require a radical deconstruction and social training that recognizes the disparity in cultural productions in academia, rather than pour down information and texts to students, with limited engagement and comparison that draws from other texts. While Hypothesis and other annotation tools are incredibly useful in engaging with material, it fails to cross-engage students across texts, and does not foster students to provide much outside of it’s contents unless provided by facilitators in the learning process. The concept of seeing one’s self in any cultural medium can have impact beyond which can motivate students to incorporate these digital tools into their learning process to create the change Jones explained, but they are also not required to achieve this.

Collaborative Close Reading, by Danica Savonick delves into what public annotation might look like in paper form within the classroom. As she describes, most of he students have not had experience in being expected to annotate in a traditional style, which makes this version of written/public annotation a way to introduce students without the intimidation of dropping a new tool on them with the expectation to produce thought in a specific matter. I was most struck by the use of handwriting, which is arguably a dying skill and expression of individuality, and the inherent practice of what it means to share a physical space with peers in the classroom. 

The beauty in this work in rooted in understanding the dismantling of power dynamics in the classroom, while providing a framework of direction to give students a foundational set of knowledge rooted in interdisciplinary and collaborative scholarship. She states, “In most of the classes I’ve taught, the first step is always teaching students how to annotate: how to notice the peculiarities and perplexities of literary language in its efforts to estrange readers and push us to think differently about the world”. This again reflects the structural process of engaging students with openly criticizing texts presented to them in the traditional literary cannon and the beauty that comes from students and educators fostering an equal production of wisdom and learning. Even in the simplest comprehension the vividness of colors, coding, written word, and community engagement are calling back to a history of oral tradition, and visual knowledge that is so often overclouded in the framework of the illusion-ed concept of what is traditional in any literary context.

While reading Blair’s work, I noticed how she left out footnoting as a form of notetaking. I searched the text for the term, and it does actually appear, in a footnote! But she doesn’t spend any time discussing the implications of the footnote in literature, which struck me as odd, because I rely so heavily on them particularly when reading Shakespeare. And then it was Jones’ piece that got me to thinking about annotation in Shakespeare. Which brings me to the focus of this blog in how might we create a digitally open Shakespeare anthology environment that brings together the scholarly conversation afforded by annotation, but further, provides the opportunity for users to link articles, explanations, imagery, sound, and discussion on elements of Shakespeare’s work not to be limited to theme, symbolism, contextualization/historicity, biographical information of the author and characters (the ones that lived at least) and verbiage.

When I got to the part in Blair’s article about Francis Bacon saying “I think… that in general one Man’s Notes will little profit another, because one man’s Conceit doth so much differ from another’s; and also because the bare Note itself is nothing so much worth, as the suggestion it gives the Reader,” I shuddered. Fortunately, she goes on to explain that using others’ notes was and is quite common and has value, but for the sake of this project, how great would it be to include Shakespeare’s own notes to be read in tandem with the plays and sonnets? Those that have been archived could easily become part of this effort and could really help the user get an in-depth justification of what is being read.

I think my favorite part of this would be the possibilities for annotation of artifacts related to the symbolism and themes within a text. For example, in Hamlet, Ophelia’s flowers that she hands out after she goes mad represent different emotions and representations of the characters. When she gives King Claudius fennel, it was because these flowers were believed to ward off evil and thus, that King Claudius is evil. Imagery of the flower and information explaining this interpretation could be provided that make for a richer digital experience than just reading Hamlet on a screen.

Furthermore, in college, I did a project on Jewish mysticism in The Tempest. Bits of the story that relate to the Kabballah and the Talmud (the second time this week we’re discussing the Talmud!) could send the reader off to any number of sources. Being able to make digital connections between the text and what Shakespeare was saying beneath the words is a very exciting concept to me.

Jones recollects being in Santa Cruz and exploring alternative-metered poems of Robert Browning. Couldn’t Shakespeare’s sonnets be played within a similar way? And also explained and elaborated upon for the reader. And read aloud (the audiobook project “layers” Sabina discussed during the presentations come to mind). Not to mention, the sonnets (and the plays) use language quite playfully and multi-definitionally. Annotation that explores this aspect would really bring the work to life.

And to have this project open-source, in that it could be added to by anyone, makes it participatory and inviting. But Anthony’s point about a fine balance in his blog between the “laws of Wikipedia” and the fear of fake news from non-creditworthy sources is a concern. I guess that is something I will have to muddle over. But the implications for the livelihood of Shakespeare’s work, and the pedagogy therein makes me think this would be something really valuable to work on. And really, this could be done with any writer’s work, I just happen to be engulfed by all of Shakespeare’s universal wisdom.

Art, music, live performance, recitation, these are all things that could be part of a digital anthology. Maybe this is already happening and I missed the boat… let me know if you know of something along these lines! Bush quotes “The inheritance from the master becomes, not only his additions to the world’s record, but for his disciples the entire scaffolding by which they were erected,” and I think that nicely summarizes my vision. And if I am going to quote, I may as well throw in the big guy himself: “All the world ‘s a stage, and all the men and women merely players. They have their exits and their entrances; And one man in his time plays many parts.” Such is the case for a digital Shakespeare anthology.

So in reading “There Are No New Directions in Annotations” by Jason B. Jones, I found that I had mixed feelings in regards to what he was stating about the culture surrounding the annotation process. I felt almost as though he was stating some very obvious parameters around annotating and it was it does for the classroom (focusing mostly on the “Annotating in the Liberal Arts Classroom” section of the text). Annotations were not always a tool accessible to students, but more so high-end scholars who are working towards publication. Similar to how the CUNY Academic Commons was actually software only accessible to faculty and graduate students until the decision was made to open the space up to undergraduate studies. They now make up for a large amount of the 900+ groups on the commons, helping to promote interactive mediums as a tool in all levels of education.

Anyway, Jones goes onto talk about how these mediums open up the potential for bringing our outside materials in order to make connections across other disciplines and perspectives of scholarship. He supports that idea when he writes about how annotations should not be limited to explaining the factual, contextual, or textual conundrums, but can be interpreted as one wishes (Jones). Like previously mentioned, this feels fairly obvious. However, the problem I am thinking about with the idea of annotating and blogging on an online space is with the facilitation of the conversation. Naturally, with the incorporation of one’s thoughts and experiences in correlation with a work, it can either promote some sense of ethos in other participants or quite the opposite. So from an online space, what authority can a teacher or professor express from behind a screen? More often or not, people tend to forget to keep civility in mind when getting into heated debates on the internet. We see it in both academic and non-academic spaces. While you are able to reply to one another, it is in no way the same as fostering a conversation within a classroom. So how do we change that? How can we have online learning spaces that remain open to new ideas whilst still having enough trust that the participants will keep it to a certain degree? It almost feels like an oxymoron. I guess my question is: what is the balance between freedom to say or debate whatever you would like and how should you then keep it within reason? The struggle lies in what something means to each individual, and that’s where the line gets seriously blurry.

Jones also touches on the other end of the spectrum in opposition of open annotation: Wikipedia. Wikipedia is accessible to literally anybody, and anybody can make adjustments. So in a sense, it is open in the same way as an open annotation tool. However, while open annotation tools such as Hypothes.is enforce little to no rules, Wikipedia has incredibly strict guidelines to follow when modifying or creating an article. I am currently enrolled in the ITP Core I course here at The Graduate Center, and this is actually what we’re experimenting with right now. Wikipedia is a tool that can give students the liberty to create something for the public, while simultaneously learning the ins and outs of publishing in a source such as this. When making adjustments, you need to state your case to the previous Wikipedians and have solid evidence. So in a way, its annotation mixed with modification and strict rules. In studying how Wikipedia functions from the inside out, and now having a general understanding of the logistics behind the online encyclopedia, I can’t help but to wonder why there’s still a heavy mistrust in the site (Jones also brings up this question). Wikipedia requires citations from trustworthy sources or else it will be removed from the article. So where lies the problem with it?

All in all, I think there needs to be a happy medium between the two types of tools. With sources like Wikipedia, you get solid, verified information, but no “spunk.” Open annotations offer a sense of freedom of speech and humility almost. However, it leaves the back door open to false information. Both have their drawbacks, of course, most things do. I feel like there should be a cross between both of their goals. Who knows, maybe there already is? Or maybe one in the making.

The fall before last, I took the first section of the ITP Core seminar, and our class also read “As We May Think.” We took turns blogging on the course readings and that week it was one of my classmates, Eileen Clancy’s turn. I was looking back at the course site for other perspectives on Bush’s essay (or anything I’d written about it) and found that her post is quite relevant to what we’ve been discussing in class.  So I thought I’d pass it along.

Memex as Icon

Oh, and there’s this.

Numerous passages in Bauer and Zirker’s “Whipping Boys Explained: Literary Annotation and Digital Humanities” got me thinking about the way text annotations accrete and the implications of an increasingly rich annotation layer for the text it’s attached to–whether a physical book that has passed through many hands, a book or article annotation that cites earlier notes on the same subject, or on a digital annotation platform. At what point in time does the annotation layer merge with the text and exist in tension with it? Or, could an annotation layer at some point rival its object as “primary text”?  Would that depend on a reader’s habits or intentions or is simply it a matter of critical mass? Bauer and Zirker gesture at these questions when they ask “what the idea of a literary text is presupposed by annotation, and how does annotation affect a text, both in its medial forms and as regards its meaning?” (paragraph 6).

As I read through the essay I began thinking about the Talmud. I’m fairly secular and have never studied it, but it offers a fascinating case for considering the implications of annotation over time. A general description of the Talmud’s contents is a “the teachings and opinions of thousands of rabbis (dating from before the Common Era through to the fifth century) on a variety of subjects, including Halakha (law), Jewish ethics, philosophy, customs, history, lore and many other topics.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talmud.

Physically, it is a conglomerate, layered text comprising of treatises, interpretations, teachings, commentary, and commentary on commentary relating to Jewish law. But it is not the kind of legal document one would find in a contemporary law library.  Here is an example of a typical page:

Page of the Talmud, diagrammed: 1: Mishnah, oral law codified into “short rulings” cir. 200 AD; 2: Gemara, “a collection of scholarly discussions on Jewish law, 200 to 500 AD, which refer to both the Mishnah and other works including the Torah; 3: Commentaries of Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki, 11th Century French scholar); 4: other commentaries dating  from the 10th Century onwards; 5: Page and chapter heading   (from https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-24367959)

Therefore, I found Bauer and Zirker’s initial attempt to limit their consideration of annotation to “literary” material a matter of convenience for the sake of their project, but not a fruitful way to think about textual annotation in the terms they set out. (Even they couldn’t sustain it: early in the essay they note that, somehow unlike creative literature, “legal and religious texts are annotated with a view to clarifying meaning and defining their relevance for the lives of people who are affected by them” (paragraph 4). Yet just a few paragraphs later they cite biblical glossing and annotation as “an enrichment of the reading process” (paragraph 11) and “based on an idea of who and what the reader is” (paragraph 10). The motivations for and implications of annotation really hold for all texts.  And the Talmud is an exceptionally rich subject for consideration in this regard, with “all the imperfections, the trivialities, the multiplicity of voices, the wild associations – everything that characterizes human conversation.”

Although it took many centuries to develop into its current form, it is not even a document frozen in time; a new edition is underway with additional, recent contributions. A comprehensive digital edition was recently launched, as “the Talmud is peculiarly suited to a digital treatment.” Mayer Pasternak, director of the project, elaborates on this:

”It’s a web of interconnected ideas and thoughts and commentaries.  In one place something might be very poorly elaborated and you’ll find in another place in the Talmud it’s discussed at length – there’s a constant cross-referencing process.” So if you’re itching to read the Talmud on your commute, there’s an app for that, with hundreds of thousands of hyperlinked sources and annotations.

This is one text that cannot exist apart from the multi-level, multi-layered annotations that accrued throughout centuries of use in numerous locations; the annotations, and its ongoing centrality in Jewish thought, debate, and practice, are what create and sustain the text as a living document. Like Bauer and Zirker’s ideal annotation platform, it is a remarkable “model of collaboration” among author, annotator, and reader over time.