Choral Annotions For Zotero

Make Your Annotations Look Like A Screenplay!

Overview:

Annotate your reading from Zotero reader...	...and create a Choral Annotation rendering in two clicks...

...add your notes in a word document...	...and print out a beautiful file!

Why Choral Annotations for Zotero ?

Engage with the world by projecting yourself in dialog with authors, publisher, and...metadata!
Discover the fields of digital humanities, literacy, semantics! Enter in reflections on authorship, identity, plagiarism, rhetorics, polyphonia, ventriloquism, and much more!
Use it for creative work and scenic arts! Work in group, compile readings, print it, and be amazed by what comes out! You'll be surprised and you'll make unexpecteded discoveries!
There is also room for therapeutical applications such as bibliotherapy, dramatherapy, and other art therapies.
By continuously asking " Who is talking - in which tone and to whom? " choral annotations contribute to a culture that cares about responsible authorship in academia. Use it as a didactic tool for writing activities!
In a so-called "post-truth era" where so-called "anthropos" have to deal with so-called "fake news" and so-called "Chat-GPT3-trained artificial intelligence", there is a call for caution to prevent a blackbox society scenario (see references section). Choral annotations are also an humble proposition to reflect on this issue.

About Choral Annotations

This is no more than a couple of html lines in three fields from Zotero advanced preference pane. There is also a very short amount of CSV Style editing. The html lines are templates in the sense that they pre-format the annotations you made from Zotero reader pane. Last part of the formatting process depends on text editors compatible with Zotero word processor plugin (i.e. most of it).

Descriptions of annotating practices in medieval times had been reported as a promising example to help tackling contemporary challenges in culture conservation and management of metadatas (see Clement & Fischer, 2021). Annotations are also deeply studied as such, see for example a recent edition by the MIT press (Kalir & Garcia, 2021).

Not so long ago has been reported some of the ups and down that students pass through in their writing process and academic life. On the one hand there is a pledge to engage more into the field of literacy to make student critically approrpiate academics norms and expectations (Rinck, 2006). On the other hand, some experiments with annotations had been regarded as very positive from teachers and investigaors in didactics (Kersh & Skalak, 2018). At the same time in the field of the digital humanities, there is still plenty of room for creativity, and instituzionalized knowledge fronteers are continuously being challenged in a lot of stimulating ways. Either in between art and science, programming and theatre, litterature and scenic arts, narratives of innovating projects or experimental methods, studies resulting from long duration and large scale experiments, or also bibliotherapy, there must be a place for choral annotations in this world.

As it comes to pedagogy, the choral annotation process proposed here could be ubicated in both of the two categories "Interaction" and "Reflexivité" in the typology proposed by a team of researcher in Switzerland, letting room for a wider reflexion on pedagogy design and practices (Lanarès et al., 2023, see pp. 104 y 109 in particular).

Is simulating a real conversation with authors as they were right here and right there in the very room we are as we read a grotesque idea? Or worst, a misleading representation so far from reality and so evidently false that we should just not follow it at all?

Well, if it feels like this, it is actually a good sign that there is value in the choral annotations proposition. The "choral" conception of having a concrete discussion with real people voicing here and now just like in dailies interactions (or a stage) has been, and still is discussed in semiotics. It refers to the concept of polyphonia (see Anscombre, 2009 for a general presentation of important concepts, also Carel & Ducrot, 2009). It also joins what one could read as the "trap of topology" as it comes to tinking about space, as pointed out by Boris Beaude (2021) for example (or Lefebre, 1974). Central in his reflexion is the latin reference to the very word of "chora" - a public space (see §64 in ibid.) to maintain a critical view on our time. Thus there is more to see than the first intuitive representation foremost mentioned, and its worthwhile discussion that broaddens one's horizons. The wording of choral annotation is an attempt to come closer to these questions and to make it lived and felt when we read a text, attention given to the most possible number of layers at stake (technology, dependecies, authorship, time and space...) so that one could engage our contemporary times with critical distance. And it also comes with fascinating activities and applications. Be it from the field of semiotics, digital and environmantal humanities, social sciences, arts, wondering and procrastination, there are many ways to reflect on our practices of reading, annotating, writing, and expressing ourselves.

Is that an anti-ChatGPT?

Chorals annotations strive for consciousness about authorship and what could be the source of a given information. Thus it has more to do with a form of check and balance device, or "garde-fou" as french say. Which is also a form of an anti-ChatGPT yes, but actually wide opened to the possibility of a wise use of GPT-like tools, by maintaining a critical distance with it. In such sense, it could also be thought of as a hyper Chat-GPT where there is strong hope for the most cautionnary use of chat-GPT and GPT-like technologies in the public space.

See also "About"page for more.
These are some lines of work to be continued by whoever would find curiosity in it.
In any case, this project started from having fun, I hope you’ll have some too experimenting it for yourself!
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References

Anscombre, J.-C. (2009). La comédie de la polyphonie et ses personnages. Langue française, 164(4), 11-31. https://doi.org/10.3917/lf.164.0011
Beaude, B. (2021). Synchorisations réticulaires. En V. Schafer (Ed.), Temps et temporalités du Web (pp. 153-172). Presses universitaires de Paris Nanterre. https://doi.org/10.4000/books.pupo.6133
Blanc, G., Demeulenaere, E., & Feuerhahn, W. (2017). Les sciences sociales aux prises avec l’environnement. En G. Blanc, E. Demeulenaere, & W. Feuerhahn, Humanités environnementales: Enquêtes et contre-enquêtes (pp. 7-18). Publications de la Sorbonne.
Carel, M., & Ducrot, O. (2009). Mise au point sur la polyphonie. Langue française, 164(4), 33-43. https://doi.org/10.3917/lf.164.0033
Clement, T. E., & Fischer, L. (2021). Audiated Annotation from the Middle Ages to the Open Web. Digital Humanities Quarterly, 015(1).
Haraway, D. (2015). Anthropocene, Capitalocene, Plantationocene, Chthulucene: Making Kin. Environmental Humanities, 6(1), 159-165. https://doi.org/10.1215/22011919-3615934
Kalir, R., & Garcia, A. (2021). Annotation. The MIT Press.
Kersh, S. E., & Skalak, C. (2018). From Distracted to Recursive Reading: Facilitating Knowledge Transfer through Annotation Software. DHQ: Digital Humanities Quarterly, 12(2). http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/12/2/000387/000387.html
Pasquale, F. (2016). The black box society: The secret algorithms that control money and information (First Harvard University Press paperback edition). Harvard University Press.
Lanarès, J., Laperrouza, M., & Sylvestre, E. (2023). Design pédagogique (1re édition). Épistémé. https://doi.org/10.55430/8015VA01. See offical site for downloading a copy.
Rinck, F. (2006). Gestion de la polyphonie et figure de l’auteur dans les parties théoriques de Rapports de stage. Lidil. Revue de linguistique et de didactique des langues, 34, Article 34. https://doi.org/10.4000/lidil.23
Schiffrin, D., Tannen, D., & Hamilton, H. E. (Eds.). (2001). The handbook of discourse analysis. Blackwell Publishers.
Shmelev, S. (1998). Whose Knowledge, Whose nature? Biodiversity, Conservation, and the Political Ecology of Social Movements. Journal of Political Ecology, 5(1). https://doi.org/10.2458/v5i1.21397

Extended Bibliography

See it online! There is a public library hosted by Zotero.

Roadmap and scenarios for Choral Annotations

More tweaked CSL Styles for more possibilities! Make metadatas speak to you and them!
Trials with various item type and more complex citations
Get feebacks for possible new features

Cite this repositoy if you feel that it makes sense for you. See it of the right-hand pane in the main page of this repo, or see citation file.

betamigo98/Choral-Annotations-For-Zotero