It warmed my librarians’ heart that PolitiFact’s first Kickstarter included annotating political rhetoric. My own definition of annotation is adding a note to an existing work to perform one or more of the following tasks:
- explain the factual origins of the statement;
- provide additional context or analysis of the statement;
- comment on the statement (sometimes humorously); or
- offer additional information related to the statement’s topic.
PolitiFact partnered with Genius on the project, using the Genius software that provides what I would describe as either in-line or off-set annotation. (See it here.)
I love reading endnotes in books. Robert Caro’s endnotes for his biographies of Lyndon B. Johnson come to mind as particularly marvelous. One of my favorite novels, Infinite Jest, is famous for its copious footnotes.