SIG:MSS

Introduction
The goal of the TEI Special Interest Group on Manuscripts is to bring together users of the TEI who whish to improve the encoding strategies for marking up transcriptions and editions of manuscript materials.

This SIG will explore a range of issues common to editing manuscripts, including:
 * 1) how to handle time based encoding
 * 2) how to record place based encoding
 * 3) how to encode fragments
 * 4) how to record codicology (the substance of the medium, ink stints, etc); Robinson noted that the TEI already has mechanisms to record this, but it needs to be better documented
 * 5) issues of substitutions
 * 6) issues of variation
 * 7) to clarify the role of using the critical apparatus tagset in manuscript transcription (which is dependent on whether one is encoding an edition or encoding a manuscript transcription)

It will do this by:
 * running a mailing list on this topic
 * assess the TEI and suggest improvements/alterations to the TEI-Council

The SIG is setup by:
 * Elena Pierazzo of the University of Pisa (Italy)
 * Susan Schreibman of the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities (US), who is also a member of the TEI Council.
 * Edward Vanhoutte of the Centre for Scholarly Editing and Document Studies of the Royal Academy of Dutch Language and Literature (Belgium), who is also a member of the TEI Council.

The SIG is convened by Edward Vanhoutte who also manages the TEI-MS-SIG List

The SIG runs a mailing list on this topic. To join visit http://listserv.brown.edu/tei-ms-sig.html

Activities
The SIG met at the Third Annual TEI Members' Meeting in Nancy, France on 08 November 2003. The report can be found here.

The second meeting of the SIG was held at the Fourth Annual TEI Members' Meeting at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA, 23 October 2004. The report can be found here.