SIG:MSS

Introduction
The goal of the TEI Special Interest Group on Manuscripts is to bring together users of the TEI who wish 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 Elena Pierazzo 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.

The third meeting of the SIG was held at Seventh Annual TEI Member's Meeting at University of Maryland, College Park, 3nd of November 2008. The agenda of the meeting can be found here; the report can be found here. During the meeting several task forces were created to deal with specific problems: the task forces main page can be found here.

Manuscript Description
Projects, resources, guidelines concerning MS description.


 * TEI P5: 13. Manuscript Description
 * Digital Scriptorium (see especially the DESCRIPTION DTD page).
 * MASTER - Interface format for the description of medieval manuscripts
 * Reviews of the manuscript description chapter: A summary

Manuscript Transcription
Projects, resources, guidelines concerning MS transcription.


 * CDL Encoding Guidelines for Manuscripts and Rare Books
 * DALF: Digital Archive of Letters in Flanders
 * Digital Scriptorium (see especially the TRANSCRIPTION DTD and DESCRIPTION DTD pages).
 * Guidelines for the electronic edition of the skaldic corpus
 * Partial Transcription of John Lydgate's "Fall of Princes"
 * The Chymistry of Isaac Newton
 * The Menota handbook
 * The Newton Project (see also The Newton Project: Implementing and Exploiting XML).
 * The Walt Whitman Archive Encoding Guidelines for Poetry Manuscripts
 * Transcriptional Protocols: Piers Plowman Electronic Archive and SEENET
 * Chroniques latines de Saint-Denis : critical edition using TEI P4 (but we hope to migrate in P5 this year) : XML Files
 * Réflexions sur l'utilisation de la TEI pour encoder les sources diplomatiques and Guide du balisage du Cartulaire blanc : two resources in French