Opening Up Video Databases to Collaborative Commentary

The TalkBank Project has constructed a web-accessible database for spoken language interactions with transcripts that are linked on the level of the sentence to both audio and video materials. This database includes several large corpora documenting learning in classrooms, tutorial sessions, meetings, and the home. Now that these data are publicly available, we can begin to build tools to facilitate a new process called collaborative commentary. We can define collaborative commentary as the involvement of a research community in the interpretive annotation of electronic records. The goal of this process is the evaluation of competing theoretical claims. The process requires commentators to link their comments and related evidentiary materials to specific segments of either transcripts or electronic media. We will examine current work in the construction of technical methods for facilitating collaborative commentary through browser technology. We will look at seven spoken language database projects that have reached a level of web-based publication that makes them promising as targets for collaborative commentary. For each database, we will consider how collaborative commentary can advance the relevant research agendas.