SIG:Correspondence

News

 * There is a slight change in the way the mapping of DALF to 'Dalfy' will be done: Edward Vanhoutte and Ron Van den Branden agreed to work on this with Bert Van Raemdonck 'face to face' and will get back to the group afterwards. Nevertheless the milestones from the Ann Arbor meeting are still valid. --pstadler 07:10, 27 November 2009 (EST)


 * I reorganized this wiki site a little bit to make it more convenient.
 * Second, I put up the minutes from Ann Arbor (thanks to Bert who sent his to me - I cheekily pasted them here). --pstadler 13:34, 17 November 2009 (EST)

Introduction
The TEI Special Interest Group on Correspondence seeks to bring together scholars interested in creating digital scholarly editions of correspondence. The goal of the SIG will be to discuss and develop sample tagsets (including suggesting additions/modifications to the TEI Guidelines) for varying forms of correspondence as well as to create tutorials and best practice models.

Because the initiative for this SIG emerged from editorial work with 19th century letters, the organizers of this SIG have focused on these types of materials. However, we want this SIG to be more encompassing, embracing varying types of historical and literary correspondence including epistles, telegrams, postcards, etc., and perhaps other types of documents that share features with physical written correspondence like diaries, diary entries, letters to the editor, e-mail, blogs, etc.

The common feature of these sorts of text is a generally formalized physical appearance (e.g., an envelope for letters) and structure of content (i.e. address field, special formulas for opener and closer). DALF was one of the best documented projects in this area developing specific DTDs for those needs in P4: this may be a starting point for further work in P5.

Initial topics for the SIG Correspondence may include:
 * the handling of the envelope and postal addresses
 * the formal description of correspondence as a written dialogue between an author and an addressee
 * correspondence-specific bibliographical data within the metadata section

Activities
The SIG runs a mailing list, which you can join by visiting http://listserv.brown.edu/tei-corresp-sig.html.

Topics currently under discussion

 * The content of a special correspDesc element
 * The content model of postscript: look at the Collection of Postscript-Examples and the contributions to the ps-discussion.
 * How to deal with enclosures or attachements to a letter
 * The content model of opener/closer and their connection with salute, signed, dateline, etc.
 * diary entries
 * definition of does not correspond with its actual use in the P5 guidelines
 * address now in &lt;p> but not in &lt;div>: maybe not a good idea
 * notification of addresses (different in different parts of the world). Could this be handled more adequately than just with datelines?

Ann Arbor, Nov 14, 2009
Business and working meeting during the annual members meeting. Participants: Syd Bauman (SB), Markus Flatscher (MF), Elena Pierazzo (EP), Malte Rehbein (MR), Paul Schaffner (PSc), Peter Stadler (PSt), Bert Van Raemdonck (BV)

The business meeting was attended by MF, PSc, PSt and BV and - since the number of participants allowed it - was an informal talk about the different projects, the last meeting at London and the "correspDesc" PS had proposed there as well as the question whether editing correspondence from printed (secondary) material needs to treated differently than correspondence from manuscript source material. Work on the roadmap was postponed to the working meeting.

The working meeting was attended by all above mentioned participants who agreed on the need for a customization of some of the P5 elements (and element classes) for encoding correspondence. Question is of course: how? Roadmap/Milestones: [Minutes PSt and BV]
 * P5 has introduced some elements that were inspired by what had been done earlier in DALF (P4), but not all P4 customizations in DALF are actually rendered in P5 (and vice versa). Hence, a comparison of both should be a good starting point to eventually come to a new ODD for encoding correspondence, and maybe even for introducing an actual module for future TEI Guidelines.
 * MF, PSt and BV agree on doing such a mapping together. Since BV is like the only DALF original left, he will coordinate this: he will split the work up, and will be contacting MF and PSt for further arrangements. [UPDATE: Edward Vanhoutte and Ron Van den Branden agreed to work on this with BV face to face and then get back to MF and PSt afterwards. --pstadler 07:04, 27 November 2009 (EST)]
 * Before X-mas, there should be a conference call to catch up on how the mapping proceeds. PSt will contact Dan O'Donnell for funding.
 * Bugs and absurdities in P5 regarding correspondence should be posted on Sourceforge. Elena Pierazzo will be the liaison between the SIG and the TEI Council. She will help SIG members to report our findings through Sourceforge or otherwise.
 * The mapping should result in a new ODD. SB is willing to help us create it. The new ODD should somehow be more or less DALF-like. Hence, the working title of the ODD is 'Dalfy'. Dalfy will be an oddified version of DALF where obviously identical concepts will already be mapped to their P5 equivalents (therefore Dalfy != DALF).
 * After the mapping is done, useful elements (or concepts, structures) that are neither in DALF or in P5 yet, should be listed. Members of the SIG are welcome to suggest their own 'favourite missing elements'.
 * With Dalfy as starting point we can than try to rearrange and modify it to come to a new Correspondence ODD (no code name yet!) that should resolve all problems and satisfy all needs...
 * Issues that came up during the meetings concern (and multiple addresses within one letter) (SB and EP), (everyone), endorsements as well as correspondence by committee (PSc)
 * Besides the work on Dalfy PSt shall finish his work on oddifying his .
 * Before Christmas: Teleconference about the mapping (MF, PSt, BV)
 * Febr. 10, 2010: Mapping done
 * July, 2010: Next SIG meeting at Digital Humanities conference (London) on new ODD

London, Nov 8, 2008
The first section (14-15:30) saw short presentations of current projects by:
 * Tim McLoughlin: James Barry's letters
 * Hilde Bøe: eMunch project (assisted by Ellen Nessheim Wiger with the Henrik Ibsen correspondence)
 * Peter Boot: correspondence of Vincent van Gogh
 * David Sewell: correspondence projects published via ROTUNDA
 * Deborah K. Wright: correspondence of Matthew Prior
 * Peter Stadler: correspondence of Carl Maria von Weber

The second section (16-16:45) had to be shortened due to organisational necessities but saw general discussion about
 * the content model of postscript which is rather restricted and does not allow for an i.e. head element. Everyone was encouraged to send examples via the list. [Let me add that the same holds true for address --pstadler]
 * the need and the possible content for an correspDesc element within sourceDesc. I will try to create an odd file with the necessary additions to the schema as a starting point for further expertise. --pstadler.
 * correspondence as an event. Lou pointed this out as similar topics were discussed in the ontologies SIG.

Correspondence Projects
Please add your projects alphabetically with link and (if possible) a short description!

Ongoing Projects

 * The Letters of Alexander Rollett. A project of Center for Information Modeling in the Humanities (ZIM) at University of Graz.
 * Alfred Escher Correspondence. A project of the Alfred Escher Foundation, Zurich (Alfred Escher-Stiftung). Edition of the correspondence of Alfred Escher, influential 19th century Swiss politician and entrepreneur (e.g. Credit Suisse, Gotthard railway), comprising several thousand letters. At first, an edition of selected letters to and from Escher will be published in book form, including rich annotations. The first volume of the series is already available. Later on, the correspondence of Alfred Escher will be made available online. The correspondence covers topics as diverse as politics, economics, education, railways, banks, insurance.
 * Digital Archive of Letters by Flemish authors and composers from the 19th & 20th century, DALF
 * Emily Dickinson's Correspondences (public version not yet online), to be published under the Rotunda imprint by University of Virginia Press. An edition of selected correspondence to and from American poet Emily Dickinson, with MS facsimiles and rich metadata capturing physical details of the manuscripts.
 * Gundolf-Elli. Correspondence between Friedrich Gundolf and Elisabeth Salomon (George-Kreis). Project at the German Literature Archive. There is no website, yet. For more information use the mailing list.
 * eMunch. Edvard Munch's written material: Complete letters, diaries and writings, (Updated and expanded 15.06.2009)
 * Online edition of the correspondence concerning the journal 'Van Nu en Straks'. Project at the Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies (KANTL-CTB, Ghent) and Ghent University (Belgium). This project is part of the broader DALF-project (see above). So far, there is no real website yet, only some information in Dutch For more information, use the mailing list.
 * Weber, C.M.v.: Complete letters, diaries, writings and compositions, Carl-Maria-von-Weber-Gesamtausgabe (at the moment german only)
 * Vincent van Gogh, The letters Vincent van Gogh, The letters (limited info only). A full edition of all the extant correspondence of Vincent van Gogh (900 letters). The edition will include a full transcription (in Dutch and French), a translation into English, a full facsimile, extensive annotation and about 2000 illustrations. The edition will be available on the web, and, somewhat abridged, in book form. See also more info

Completed Projects

 * The Dolley Madison Digital Edition, part of the University of Virginia Press's Rotunda series. This is an ongoing publication, but the first two "volumes" are online. Currently the underlying data is tagged using the Model Editions Partnership variant of TEI (P4), but we are also exporting and transforming the documents to TEI P5 for interoperability with other material. (Contact: [mailto:dsewell@virginia.edu David Sewell])