ARSA: An archive social annotation tool for content digitization

The process of annotating multimedia contents (such as audio files and image documents) in digital archive requires three types of resource including human, time and money. Today worldwide digital archives have increased in their sizes. As a result, the content annotation would require a large amount of resources. To help reduce the cost associated with the content annotation, we have designed a framework called ARSA (ARchive Social Annotation) to provide a convenient platform for users to annotate digital contents in social networking environment. ARSA adopts the concept of crowdsourcing which allows users to collaborate in content annotation task. The current version of ARSA has been designed and implemented for the Buddhadasa Indapanno Archives (BIA). The contents are in two formats, (1) audio files and (2) image documents of handwritten and typewritten texts. Both contents are related to Buddhadasa´s dhamma teaching. ARSA provides a user-friendly and socially connected interface for volunteers to transcribe audio files and image documents. The transcribed texts could be used to implement a search engine for full-text search or used for preparing printed materials.