Book People Archive

Re: Annotations (was Re: Page images of books)

On Tue, 6 Mar 2001, Lars Aronsson wrote:

> Eric Eldred wrote:
> > Fascinating idea, annotations.  The New York Times 2001-02-24 had
> > an interesting story on them.  See
>
> A system for annotations would not have to be tied to an online
> edition.  I'd like to add my annotations to titles I find in a library
> catalog system, but the only similar system that allows me to rate and
> review books is Amazon.com.  Why not the IPL.org or LC.gov?
[...]

A possibility for anyone looking to make such a system: over the years
there have been several attempts to extend the way the web works by
allowing 'backlinks' so that readers of any page on the web can see what
other pages link to that page.  I must confess I never understood exactly
how this was supposed to work -- in fact I'm sure it varied from system to
system, and exactly what the word means isn't really agreed upon.  Search
for 'backlinks' in Google and you might find something useful, though.

John

[Moderator: You can also search for such links *in* Google, and in some
 other search engines.  Use a search term like

    link:http://digital.library.upenn.edu/books/

 (substitute your favorite URL after the "link:" part to see who links
  to that URL.)  First I've seen the OLBP featured in
  Apple's Wireless iBook promotions, for instance...  - JMO]