An idea for (e)book annotations

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I was thinking about this last night - I don't know (without doing any research, mind you) of any transferrable way of creating and sharing annotations for books.

I'm thinking something along the lines of a 'mapped' outline/opml file, where the outline structure maps against chapters and pages of a book, and an ebook reader (device and/or software) could display the relevant sections of opml content when called (and add to).

Maybe the opml could be handled in the same way subtitle files for divxs (or maybre a more useful metaphor, director commentary tracks) that get synced.

It's easier than timecoding, but the structure of the outline can easily meet the structure of the book:

Needs more thought - and of course, it would need to be useful without gaining any level of support from PDF readers or Ebook devices - but that support would enhance the experience.

I think outlines would seem to be the perfect structure for extensive lists of annotations.

I'd love to share annotation lists for books I was currently reading.

Not really a disclaimer, but an explanation - I'm involved in an online outliner (ThinkFold) so I'm often seeing 'outlines' as a solution to information problems.

The real problem is do annotations actually exist already in a useable format? Does anyone here write decent notes on books they read? I often think I ought, but I rarely do...

But in Uni, access to a bunch of opml annotations for key texts I was reading would have been bloody amazing (as would electronic copies of the text, actually :-).

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