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sg1.md

Public · content/sg1.md · uploaded 12 days ago

sg1.md
Contents ▾
  1. 1. LDC Software and Annotation Infrastructure
  2. 2. Timeline
  3. 3. Annotation Types
  4. 4. Customizable Annotation Software
  5. 5. To the web and back again
  6. 6. Links
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LDC Software and Annotation Infrastructure

  • Systems Group / Systems Service Center formed circa 2008
  • Software Group formed 2011 to focus on collection, annotation, delivery
  • Hardware concerns shared by both groups, notably:
    • Software Group increasing handles VMs in the cloud
    • Software Group handles collection equipment, i.e. recording audio and video

Timeline

  • Before 2011 siloed desktop apps
    • effective but lacked flexibilty
  • Since 2011, focus on web apps
  • Since 2018, introduction of cloud solutions
  • 2025 introduction of Agentic AI
  • Future web and desktop apps for secure environments

Annotation Types

  • mention, entity, coref: from text extents
  • various event and semantic annotations from text, audio, video
  • bounding box and sequencing to support multilingual OCR
  • audio auditing and waveform based transcription

Customizable Annotation Software

  • impossible (ok, impractical)
  • Even in house customization only wasn't successful
  • As you increase flexibility you increase difficulty
  • Technology also changes too rapidly, changing the landscape
  • The middle ground of "customizable" really needs developer support
  • This is still true with AI agents because they need guidance

To the web and back again

  • LDC had web apps in the 90's, the CGI era
  • However, serious annotation was desktop until circa 2011
  • In a just a few years, all annotation was web based
  • The web technology landscape has changed rapidly
  • Unfortunately is the change is mostly an increase in complexity
  • The move to the web was very much desirable
  • However, agentic AI has led me to question if desktop apps should be reconsidered

Links

  • This poster describes our transcription tool, but many of the points apply to other tools we've done. asa2021
  • This is our PennSound poster. asa2026
  • LanguageARC Citizen Science portal. LanguageArc
  • Language Game NameThatLanguage
  • This shows off some of our recording hardware capabilities. mics
  • Our CAMIO paper with pics of bounding boxes camio
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