Data-rich Web Annotations. Embedding Datasets to Link Complex Metaphor Analyses with Their Textual Basis

Annotating is a central activity with a long history in the humanities. For the purpose of digital annotations, the Web Annotation Data Model (WADM) is an established W3C standard that enables data sharing and is supported by a wide array of applications. Storing simple annotations is quite easy, but storing complex data is difficult. We propose a generic extension mechanism for the WADM that allows storing structured data inside the body of a Web Annotation. In contrast to previous research, our proposal uses the base WADM without custom extensions (except for the embedded data themselves), and thus facilitates data sharing. As a use case, we show how a domain ontology is used to model structured information about metaphors in religious texts, and how we apply our approach to store the information in data-rich annotations that can be used for queries that support comparative research across languages.