SIG:Correspondence/task-force-correspDesc

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= Task force "correspDesc" =


 * Members: Marcel Illetschko, Sabine Seifert, Peter Stadler
 * "Pusher": Mariana Gomes

We will try to make our work as transparent and open as possible so others can chime in and contribute at every stage. Please feel free to make use of all the various comment/edit/share/fork functions or to contact us directly.

Goal
Create a formal proposal for a  (or whatever name) element for approval by the TEI council as a new element of the TEI standard. This work shall be based on the "second draft for a correspondence module and a wrapper element for correspondence meta data" as it was started during the 2012 SIG meeting.

Background
There have been several P4 projects with a dedicated correspondence schema (DALF probably being the renowned). While several correspondence tags ( etc.) are available from the TEI P5 standard, there is no specific way of dealing with correspondence meta data (e.g. sender, addressee) in the current TEI header. Since that's an impediment on the interoperability and interchange of these texts and since there are good practice models working with a , the SIG Correspondence started to draft such a proposal during its 2012 meeting and now set up a task force for elaborating this draft.

Repositories
https://github.com/TEI-Correspondence-SIG/correspDesc This will be the main place for bringing together the proposal.

Conf Call Dec. 18, 2013
We closely dealt with the question, what information we want to encode within the new  element and what elements will be needed. Child elements of  will be:, , , , , , Korrespondenzstelle, type of correspondence, bearer and method of message, information whether there is an envelope or not (description of envelope in  and transcription in ).

What will not be encoded within  because it is not letter-specific: (specific for manuscripts in general, not just for letters), printed things like form fields or letterheads, and postage stamps - all this information is encoded within .

There will be a short presentation of the work of the SIG Correspondence and especially the  task force at the meeting on technical interfaces in German digital editions of letters around 1800 at the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin on February 26th.

Next conf call will be on Jan. 8, 10AM.

Conf Call Nov. 26, 2013
Second meeting of the task force. Main topic was bringing together correspondence specific metadata (that should be encoded within a new  - or otherwise called - element but not necessarily): sender, addressee, place of sender, date of sending, place of addressee, date of receiving, type of correspondence (letter, postcard, etc.), incipit, envelope, context (previous/next letter), postmark, stamp, perhaps transmitter of the message and method of delivery.

We had a closer look at the DALF Preliminary P5 Proposal and the  element as well as the  element used by Weber-Gesamtausgabe. We dealt more closely with the problems of how and where to encode envelopes, the type of message, postmarks, etc. Seals are not specific for letters but for other manuscripts as well. Therefore, changing their encoding (in ) is not necessary.

Next steps: Peter starts reworking/extending the 'second draft', Marcel turns the minutes of the SIG Correspondence meetings into TEI, and starts writing goal and background information, DALF and WEGA, development of this proposal, etc. Sabine starts putting together information on the letter specific metadata and their description, place, examples, etc. as well as building up a structure for our proposal.

Next conf call will be on Dec. 18, 10AM. At the face-to-face 'boot camp' on January 13-14 in Berlin, we will work on the customization ODD file.

Conf Call Nov. 6, 2013
First meeting of the task force. We summed up the SIG meeting at Rome and made sure that we all shared (more or less) the same ideas about the goal of the task force. Had a look at the "second draft" from last year which we decided to take as a starting point for future work.

Furthermore we decided on GitHub as a central repository for carrying out the work on our proposal and envisioned a face2face meeting at the beginning of next year as sort of a "boot camp" (scheduled for Jan. 13/14 in Berlin).

Next conf call shall be on Nov. 26, 12PM were we will look more closely at DALF and try to narrow down the "correspondence specific meta data".

Literature and previous work

 * DALF Preliminary P5 Proposal
 * Request for a correspondence module and a wrapper element for correspondence meta data
 * Winfried Woesler: Richtlinienvorschläge für Briefkommentare, in: Wissenschaftliche Briefeditionen und ihre Probleme. Editionswissenschaftliches Symposium, Berlin 1998, p. 87–96