AVAnnotate

AVAnnotate is a digital tool created by Dr. Tanya Clement and Brumfield Labs that allows users to create exhibits of annotated audio artifacts. In this software review, I utilize the affordances of AVAnnotate, along with the webtext format of Kairos, to think about the rhetorical and pedagogical benefits that AVAnnotate provides to scholars and instructors interested in the intersection of digital technology and audio material. I draw on my personal experience of being a graduate research assistant (GRA) for AVAnnotate to do this work. However, to not separate my affiliation with the tool and project from this review, I use an audio recording review and annotations to develop my perspective on the potential for the software.

The format of this review, then, includes six sections that are organized according to different aspects of AVAnnotate. Each section includes a portion of the review that I've recorded and created a IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework, often pronounced "triple-eye-eff") manifest with AVAnnotate. The six sections are Infrastructure, Audio, Annotation, Context, Collaboration, and Application. Following these sections, I also include a short concluding note and a transcript of the audio files associated with each section. In the annotations of the audio in each section, I comment and expand on (as necessary) how the information in the review relates to my experience as a GRA. For instance, if in the audio recording I say, "I believe AVAnnotate is a tool that allows for sustainable collaboration on audio artifacts," then an annotation may state, "I helped with the production of a collaborative digital edition, and this informs my perspective." Each section of this webtext is designed to support an ethical and accountable review.

The above format also serves to illustrate one of the major interventions of AVAnnotate: The software provides a space for students and researchers to practice collaborative listening as a rhetorical response to the concerns of audio artifact accessibility. In allowing users to annotate audio and create digital exhibits, AVAnnotate teaches users, as a collective, to actively listen to and use sound to develop access to knowing and information. I find in this review that the software's infrastructure, collaborative components, annotation, audio file hosting, and context curation is essential to this major intervention.

To navigate this webtext, please click on the hyperlinked pages on the left (or below, on smaller devices) or in the second paragraph above. Each of these pages include a transcript, playable audio, and time-stamped annotations with a layer column. Feel free to work across and through each section by reading the transcript, listening to the audio, filtering through the annotations, or by using the layer as a categorical indicator.