Minutes from November 3, 2007

TEI-C Annual Meeting, Saturday, November 3 DAY 3 SIG TEI in Libraries

Libraries SIG will convene Saturday, November 3 from 10:00 am - 12:30 pm Pasted from 
 * Greetings and round-table introductions
 * Discussion
 * Impact of mass digitization on text encoding
 * Quality control scripts/tools (beyond Schematron)
 * Mapping the TEI Header; pointing to other metadata schemes
 * Outsource v. in-house encoding (strategies, vendor recommendations, etc.)
 * The TEI TiteA standard for off-site text encoding
 * Serials encoding: General issues and issues with granular metadata
 * Migrating to P5
 * Issues to address? Need for working groups? Next steps for the group

Attending: [Michelle has the full list]
 * Michelle Dalmau - electronic text in DLP
 * Natasha Smith - been with TF in Libraries since its inception
 * Daniel Pitti - interested in TEI and Libraries, although not really involved in projects that pertain exactly right now
 * Catherine Walter, U Nebraska-Lincoln, co-direct research center for the humanities, National Digital Newspaper Program for Nebraska, Nebraska public documents, does scholarly and library project
 * Jones, National Library of Wales, dictionary work for Cambrian (welsh journal), welsh journals on line
 * Chris Ruotolo, UVA Library, we have big stores of legacy content in different flavors of TEI, migrating to an IR
 * Syd Baumann, Women Writers Project (not library-associated project)
 * Cassandra, washington university (st louis) in the Library 3 text based projects, new member
 * Paul Schaeffer, uMich, basically P3
 * Cronin, University College, Cork, Ireland, Special Collections -- Celt project (10 years old)
 * Elizabeth McAulay, UCLA
 * Pat Yott, Brown University

Discussion of the TEI Tite specification

DP: The status of the TEI Tite SB: Are we going to put resources into it? Are we just going to throw it out there? DP: Let's look at the politics of it? I believe DLF was the one behind pushing for this. SB: John Unsworth, in search of services, and he said to the Board that we need to make more member services. And he proposed a specification for initial capture of a vendor. We might make some progress here. I think the plan was to have the TEI-C serve as an aggregator of small projects. Small liberal arts colleges in particular could take advantage of it. DP: There's also an intellectual argument behind it. TEILite was a little too rich for library purposes. Large-scale projects in libraries tended to go to a smaller tagsets -- their own flavors limited interoperability. If we can get consensus among Libraries to use one single TEI constrained flavor then we can start doing implementations together. SB: How it got to be where it is. The DLF and the TEI is interested in this project. The DLF has money and the TEI doesn't. The DLF provided the support for metings. NS: overview of the history of DLF and the TEI in Libraries Workgroup. David Seaman provided money. DP: Now that David Seaman has left, is there still support from the DLF for TEI in Libraries? SB: Perry Trawler (GA that John Unsworth found) did a specification. I was hoping the SIG would look at this specification and be critical. It's written as an ODD. The Council saw that it was an ODD and said we have to bring it into P5. They tried to make it conformant with TEI P5. It can never be conformant, though, because it's supposed to save keystrokes. And TEI P5 requires namespaces -- which doesn't save keystrokes. DP: Somebody needs to step up and do some communication. I would say that one of the things that needs to be done and organize the Library community to look at this and evaluate it. SB: I'm not really interested in details, but I'm interested in the "show-stoppers". DP: When you look at it, is it worth conforming to the spec to get the benefits? MD: Has it been tried? DP: !ACTION! Paul can take three instances and test them. SB: some discussion of whether there's a problem -- what tagging differences would make you sad. It would be good to have 2 XSLTs that would transform files back from vendor into the Has anyone talked to a vendor? DP: at least to Apex, yes. NS: John U. was talking about sending out a survey to find out who would like to use it? MD: DLF is interested in this and would like to fund a person to do some. SB: SIGs cannot ask for external money without talking to the Board of Directors. I can't imagine saying no. SB: The Tight project doesn't need much work. I want to know if the spec DP: The three key institutions that need to look at it are the 3 institutions whose guidelines were used as the template. CR: I don't think Uva will ever use it. DP: I think it's important to see if CDL likes it. (and the two others -- including ) DP: You have to look at this as a Library communication problem. PS: I am going to look into the spec right away. SB: I notice no one jumping up to do the XSLT. If it's bundled as a package that would be great. DP: What would it cost to write the XSLTs? SB: Chris R. and Pat Y. have just volunteered to do it. DP: Let's get some funding to do this and they're going to have a deliverable. SB: It's a scheme with instructions. Documentation for the vendor (not as long as Umich and CDL instructions) DP: Before you do the XSLT, we should do a crosswalk. This could be really informative for writing an XSLT. And you find out right away whether you have a showstopper. '''!ACTION! -- Cassandra at Washington U will look at it, as well as Lisa (UCLA), UMich (Peter)''' MD: How would it work to have the TEI-C (we're going to add a new host, and each host has to contribute a lot of work) ? How would they work as an aggregator. DISCUSSION: how is it going to be done -- how do you aggregate? Who coordinates? It's hard to manage vendors even within your own institution. RLG negotiated a blanket rate for the EAD (with Apex). Then all institutions got a price break if they were using that. MD: Summary of TEI Tight Spec Discussion DP: Mapping from the TEI Spec; taking it out to libraries, ALA presentation, raise awareness, exposing it; the IFLA agenda, do we make paper promotion; develop a strategy for promoting it; LITA, PARS, ALCTS, (and we'll brainstorm more) We'll work together via email to create a pitch MD: I'll serve as the bridge between the SIG and the DLF. DLF would like to migrate the TEI in Libraries out of the DLF website into a TEI Website and they need to be revised. DLF does not want to maintain revisions. SB: The TEI-C isn't behind this document because it is not conformant with TEI. Should the levels be kept the way they are. DP: This should get vetted. From a TEI point of view, they don't have to sanction something. PY: Can we place it on the Library of Congress website the way X [didn't catch it] standard is. MD: If we start to amass documentation. SB: The TEI-C should not try to monitor something what's on the wiki of the SIG. However, the more you publicize something the more TEI-C will want to look at. MD: We can look at moving the "TEI in Libraries" document into Library of Congress space. Hopefully, we can start to make some documentation. SB: Is the SIG wiki the permanent home of documentation? MD: No, that's a good revision space. JU: We have two audiences. Scholars and Librarians. In other conversations, there's been comments about giving an introduction to newer people. "Are you here for the first time?" DISCUSSION -- can we offer documentation on the TEI site? Yes. The problem is more that the "TEI in Libraries" promotes naughty usage! John said he'd help. JU: I think there's room for more educational materials and the group is not opposed to that. MD: Let's bundle that into the proposal. SB: It might be nice that the Tite should be different levels. JU: no that's losing sight of the purpose of the Tite project. NS: These levels were also tied up to specific projects. At the last meeting, we had trouble finding somebody using Level 3. Because it was generated completely out of LC practice. Discussion of what Level the TEITIght spec is at. JU: Let's try to request Board approval tomorrow. SB: I don't know where the guidelines should live. And we don't have to decide that now. NS: What's wrong with putting them on the TEI site? SB: They violate the TEI guidelines and that's not good with the Board. NS: There are lots of places to put it: Activities, Communities, Guidelines MD: We should start by finding out what other documentation is being generated. SB: Let's pass it off to Chris and Julia, to find a good place for them. JU: In the education SIG downstairs they were talking about using YouTube MD: !ACTION! -- you will talk to the Board about the TEI Libraries SIG putting forth a request for funding to DLF for the TEI Tight Spec (survey, marketing) and also the "TEI in Libraries" MD: We talked about scope (how many pages?) SB: What does aggregating mean? How much work does it take? JU: I think we'd have to review what people are sending us. The economy scale is related to sending them like things. We need to do some grouping. SB: How would it work? JU: So how does it work with the EAD spec? DP: The idea is that you get a sufficient number of the members to committing to submitting a number of pages. MD: This is the purpose of the survey. Is there any documentation about this? DP: I can ask Merilee Profit how this was done. Essentially, RLG negotiated a contract with Apex. MD: If there were this much of discount, would you participate?
 * we'll have the three volunteers take a look at it TEI Tight and get feedback
 * start talking to DLF / TEI Board