Text Encoding for Humanities Scholarship, University of Maryland

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

9:00 Welcome and introductions

9:45-11:00 Session 1: What are digital research materials? (JF) (Slides)

This introductory session will include presentations and discussion to situate text encoding within the context of scholarly digitization projects. We'll address questions including:

• What is digitization? what is text encoding?
• What do they accomplish and how do they change our relationship to scholarly information?
• What are our research aims and how do different kinds of materials support them?

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:00 Session 2: About the TEI (JF) (Slides)

This session will provide some background on the TEI and its role as a community standard in the digital research landscape, including issues of:

• Mission and impact
• Scope
• How it affects us

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:30 Session 3: Basics of XML (SB)(Slides)

This session will introduce the basic concepts of XML and TEI, and the essentials of using the <oXygen/> XML editor.

2:30-3:00 Break

3:00-5:30 Session 4: Hands-on practice (SB and JF) (Slides)

In this session we'll go over the basics of TEI markup, looking at simple encoding examples, and then doing hands-on practice encoding sample texts (or texts brought by participants) using templates provided.

Thursday, May 1, 2008

9:00-10:30 Session 5: Concepts of markup for scholarship (JF) (Slides)

This session will include presentations and discussion on encoding some features of particular importance for scholarly usage, including:

• variant readings
• manuscript transcription
• critical apparatus
• critical commentary and annotation

10:30-11:00 Break

11:00-12:00 Session 6: Challenges of markup for scholarship (JF) (Slides)

This session will include presentations and discussion of some of the significant challenges in using text encoding to represent scholarly research materials, including

• overlapping structures
• representing textual materiality
• representing figural and graphical information

12:00-1:00 Lunch

1:00-2:00 Session 7: Designing a custom encoding system with TEI (SB) (Slides)

This session will introduce TEI customization with a demonstration, followed by more detail during the hands-on session following for those who want to explore in more depth

2:00 Break

2:30-5:30 Session 8: Hands-on practice and basics of CSS (SB and JF) (Slides)

This session will focus on more encoding practice, working with the participants' own texts. We'll include a brief discussion of CSS for those who are interested, to enable participants to view styled versions of their encoded materials.

Friday, May 2, 2008

9:00-10:00 Session 9: XML publication tools (SB) (Slides)

This session will present an overview of the most common tools and approaches for publishing TEI documents.

10:00-10:30 Break

10:30-11:30 Session 10: Project management (JF) (Slides)

This session will include presentation and discussion of some of the significant issues in developing and managing scholarly text encoding projects, including:

• funding and sustainability
• staff and work flow
• institutional location and disciplinarity

11:30-12:00 Wrap up (JF)

In the final wrap-up we'll have time for concluding questions and discussion.