imageMAT: a Tool for Interoperable Image Annotation and the Shared Canvas Model

Project Demo

Christine McWebb
Director, Academic Programs
Associate Professor for French
University of Waterloo Stratford Campus

Biography
Dr. McWebb holds a PhD in French from the University of Western Ontario, Canada. Before coming to Waterloo, McWebb worked as Assistant Professor in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta (1999-­‐2003). She has published edited collections, a monograph, book chapters and articles in the areas of late medieval literature/culture, the interaction between text and iconography, scientific discourse in literature, and Digital Humanities.

Abstract
The MARGOT team (http://margot.uwaterloo.ca) is currently completing the development of the prototype for a web-based image annotation tool designed to facilitate and perfect online searches, information aggregation, annotation, and self-organizing knowledge of enriched multi-­representational databases. Through its development, the MARGOT Annotation Tool (imageMAT, http://imagemat.org ) will participate actively in developing common standards for annotation and content sharing tools, called Shared Canvas and proposed by the Stanford Framework, Stanford University Libraries, which repositories of digital materials will be able to implement.

We will give an overview of the prototype tool, including a live demo. We will also report on the methods used for usability testing and findings of preliminary user testing by graduate students and repository administrators. Furthermore, we will demonstrate the ways in which imageMAT can be used as an effective teaching tool in the medieval/early modern literature and culture classroom. Finally, we will demonstrate potential applications for scholarly research, focusing primarily on the tool’s interoperability with a range of image-­‐based repositories that subscribe to the Shared Canvas model (such as the Roman de la rose database at Johns Hopkins University, the collection of medieval illuminated manuscript in Gallica, Bibliothèque nationale de France, and others).