Schedule

Session 1 (9:30-10:45): What is Text Encoding?

Presentations and discussion on the fundamental concepts of text encoding and its role in scholarly research, addressing the following topics:

• What is markup? what is its function? why is it important?
• Basic concepts of XML
• What is the role of standards and the TEI? why do we need markup languages?

Session 2 (11:00-12:30): The Role of the TEI

An overview of the TEI as an organization and as a text encoding standard through presentations and group discussion, addressing the following topics and issues:

• The TEI's situation within the landscape of digital humanities scholarship: what are its intellectual affiliations and commitments?
• How does the TEI function to support the creation of digital humanities texts? what is its role in defining how texts should be represented?
• How is the TEI currently used, and how is it evolving?
• What are the alternatives to the TEI? what are the advantages and risks of using a detailed encoding system like the TEI?

Session 3 (2:00-3:30): Encoding as Disciplinary Practice

Presentation and discussion of the encoding process focusing on the varieties of markup and how it represents the text, looking at samples from a variety of projects and addressing issues such as:

• How does one decide which textual features are important?
• How much detail is appropriate, useful, necessary? what are the strategic tradeoffs with a more detailed encoding?
• What disciplinary assumptions does the encoding reflect? Is it possible to have a discipline-free representation of the text? if so, what would it look like?
• How will scholarly communication be affected by these technologies? what are the positive and negative impacts?
• How is scholarly research being changed by the use of digital resources? How do we see it developing in the future?
• What are the next steps? How can participants learn more?

Session 4 (4:00-5:30): Innovative Research with TEI Documents

Presentation and discussion of some compelling models of TEI publication, examining how new interface tools are opening up innovative ways of working with digital texts, and addressing the following questions:

• What new interface features seem most useful to humanities scholars?
• What specialized features are needed by scholars from particular disciplines?
• Do these new features change scholarship or simply facilitate it?
• What kinds of encoded information are necessary to support the kinds of functions and interpretive work envisioned by these projects?
• How does a knowledge of text encoding affect how we use such resources?

Slides

1. What is Markup, TEI Source, HTML
2. What is XML, TEI Source, HTML
3. What is the TEI, TEI Source, HTML
4. Publication, TEI Source, HTML

The following additional materials were not actually presented at the seminar, but may be useful as context:

• Basic Encoding, TEI Source, HTML
• Pointing, linking, XInclude TEI Source, HTML
• Rendition & presentational markup TEI Source, HTML
• Transcription of primary sources, TEI Source, HTML
• Regularization and Keying, TEI Source, HTML
• Alternative readings, TEI Source, HTML
• Overlap, TEI Source, HTML
• Figures, TEI Source, HTML
• Document analysis, TEI Source, HTML
• Customization, TEI Source, HTML
• Strategic Issues TEI Source, HTML
• Considerations for Document Modelling and Customization, TEI Source, HTML
• CSS, TEI Source, HTML
• Participation, TEI Source, HTML
• Language identification, TEI Source, HTML
• Documentation, TEI Source, HTML
• Character Issues, TEI Source, HTML

Projects shown during the seminar

• Walt Whitman Archives
• Women Writers Online
• Canterbury Tales Project: Hengrwrt Chaucer Digital Facsimile
• Comparative Chinese
• Irish Glossaries
• Anglo-Saxon Poetry project
• The Chymistry of Isaac Newton
• The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, MS 3973
• The Map of Early Modern London
• The Voyage of the Slave Ship Sally, from the Brown University Steering Committee on Slavery & Justice
• Glen Worthy demonstrated Stanford Library's archive (password required)

Links to resources and documentation

• Web site for this series of seminars
• TEI-L listserv archive. To subscribe to TEI-L, click on the "Join or Leave TEI-L" link.
• HUMANIST, "an international electronic seminar on humanities computing and the digital humanities"; to subscribe to HUMANIST click on the "Subscribe".
• Women Writers Project's encoding documentation
• Newton Papers Project
• DALF, the Digital Archive of Letters in Flanders, cited here for their extensive encoding documentation
• TEI tutorials and documentation
• Roma, the web interface for making ODD files, and a tool for generating documentation and schemas from ODD files
• The TEI Pizza Chef, the Roma for P4

Colophon (for slides)

The slides are written in a customized TEI P5 markup language that is still under development. Feel free to read (and copy, modify, etc.) the ODD customization file; feel free to read the documentation for this language or to look at and use the resulting schema, but they should not be modified directly. (Change the ODD file and submit it to Roma.)

Instructor contact information

Send mail to Julia or Syd.