“Problems of Annotation” Workshop Michael Groden     Ideas I Came With That Remain Unshaken Annotations can usefully be layered, with “factual” notes becoming increasingly elaborate and then blending into criticism and interpretation. " An initial note, as short as possible, perhaps available as a pop-up screen when the user holds the cursor over a word for a few seconds, is the most useful and efficient way to give information to a beginning reader. New Ideas A Ulysses Dictionary. " A list of cruxes" Drawings of all the costumes worn in Circe" A listserv for contributors" Accurate sounds (use listserv for suggestions and sources)" Instruct programmers to make users’ ability to add comments and links easy." Indicate all words in, say, Scylla and Charybdis that can be attributed to Shakespeare, to Homer, etc. Perhaps use color overlays for different authors." Find a way for users to utilize existing mechanisms (such as the search engine) to simulate categories of information that we haven’t set up via tags." Have everything reviewed by women as well as men" A Virtual Reality tour of Joyce holdings in libraries " Indicate the physical aspects (Jerome McGann’s “bibliographic code” or “physique”) of the various editions of Ulysses What I’ve Learned Reading Ulysses in hypermedia can be conceived in terms of a thoroughfare with side streets, department stores, blind alleys, and dead ends." Reading Ulysses in hypermedia can also be conceived in horizontal and vertical terms: digging while moving across space." The context (book and/or information to be included and/or annotator) will affect the annotation at every stage." Whatever preconception the annotator brings to the passage or episode (what it means, how it works) will affect the annotation at every stage." The annotator’s gender will in some way affect the annotation." Annotation of Ulysses did not begin with Gifford." It is important to indicate whenever we don’t know something or when there is no agreement on what something is or means, although we need to do this in a more useful way than merely saying “Identity unknown." What seems to work as a strategy for annotating one part of the book might not work in another part (particularly in the second half). This is likely to be especially true for allusion/sources/intertextuality." One person’s necessary annotation is someone else’s superfluous one." Since every pattern that Joyce sets up in Ulysses eventually gets disrupted, every pattern we set up for annotation will at some point fall apart, too. Words of Wisdom Possible heading for all Ulysses annotations (apologies to Adaline Glasheen): “What it is when everything is something else.” " Hypermedia readers as “wanderers on the cloudy surface of mental woe” (Amanda M. Ros, Irene Iddlesleigh) " “Toto, I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore.”