A method and apparatus for adding multimedia annotations to paper documents is disclosed. In one embodiment, a user generates a multimedia annotation to be combined to a paper document. The multimedia annotation is combined with the paper document to form a multimedia document. In another embodiment, an image of the paper document is generated. The multimedia annotation is combined to the image of the paper document to form an electronic multimedia document. The multimedia annotation is attached to the paper document in the form of plain text URL or bar code representing the URL. The electronic multimedia document is stored for later retrieval.