Future changes to Best Practices for TEI in Libraries

This page describes changes to the Best Practices for TEI in Libraries which will be made at some point but which will not hold up a major release of this document.

milestone element
-- Is this TEI-conformant? Is there a better way to do this in any case?


 * This is not TEI conformant, unless you think that "*****" is a valid way of naming tsomething (here this particular milestone). I would suggest


 * Or possibly


 * Or you could use if you have followed tite in adding it. LouBurnard

The TEI Header

 * consider whether various MARC 1xx and 7xx subfields could be broken out into components of persName. If so, we'll change recommendations for persName@type.

list of elements deleted and changed by our ODDs
Syd's list of elements is now on a different wiki page because this page is meant for things to be addressed once version 3.0 is complete.

Identifiers for outside metadata?
Should we have a place in the header to indicate an identifier for an outside metadata record for the item? Examples: Having such a link would allow a delivery system to provide an unambiguous link to this full metadata without relying on matching other information in the header like a title, ISBN, or call number. (Kshawkin)
 * record number for the source document in the local catalog
 * record number for the source document in WorldCat
 * record number for this TEI document in the local catalog
 * record number for this TEI document in WorldCat

Yes, I think we should. How about the spot where the TEI Guidelines recommend putting the code for the classification of the text (in some scheme), &lt;classCode> inside &lt;classDec>, or is that too much of a stretch? (—Syd)


 * During the call on 2/10/09, Syd said he no longer thinks use of classCode (and a corresponding classDecl) is a good idea. Instead, he suggested we createa new element, otherDesc, to contain elements from outside the TEI namespace for metadata not covered by the TEI header. The GBP could specify how this element is used. (Kshawkin)

NOTE: we talked about this during our conf call on 2/10/09; we decided to have a sub-group conference call on 2/17/09 to talk in more detail about this. Emcaulay


 * We didn't get to this on 2009-02-17, so we postponed to 2009-03-03. However, few people showed up, so we postponed again.  As Syd put it, there are two issues to consider here:


 * A. What mechanism should we use to we point from the TEI header to metadata located outside the TEI document? (For example, how do you identify a MARC, METS, or MODS record that provides additional metadata about the TEI document and/or the source document?)


 * B. Should we provide a recommendation on storing non-TEI metadata within the TEI document (using a different element namespace)? For example, should we allow Dublin Core elements anywhere in the TEI header?

Email discussions in late March 2009 and early April 2009 with Syd, Melanie, Kevin, Michelle and Glen did not reach a conclusion. Tentative plans for the future would do this sort of thing when an element has the @ref attribute:

Welles, Gideon, 1802-1878.

except that in your example there's no @type or other method for describing the relationship between the content of  and the value of @ref. P5 says that @ref "provides an explicit means of locating a full definition for the entity being named by means of one or more URIs", but we are looking for a typology of some sort for these links and need a place to indicate the type of link.

And we'd do this when there's no @ref:

 [. . .] 

for which you'd find elsewhere in the document:



link elements might be grouped together in one of these places:


 * TEI/teiHeader/profileDesc/creation/ab/linkGrp
 * 1st child of last child of
 * TEI/text/back/div[@type='editorial']/linkGrp

UPDATE: We'll probably use in various header elements: see https://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?func=detail&aid=2493417&group_id=106328&atid=644065. In any case, we'll need to tell people how much metadata to include in TEI header if they will also have external, possibly canonical, metadata sources.

While at the Swinburne conference with John I happen to look over his shoulder while he was encoding and I noticed his use of &lt;relatedItem></tt> in the &lt;biblStruct></tt>: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-relatedItem.html. You may have come across this already in your break-out meetings, but at a quick glance, the application seems to fit our needs: &lt;relatedItem></tt> contains or references some other bibliographic item which is related to the present one in some specified manner, for example as a constituent or alternative version of it. John was using it in conjunction with an embedded &lt;note></tt> to provide additional context. &lt;ptr></tt> and &lt;ref></tt> are also valid within <relatedItem>. (—Mdalmau)


 * this element is designed to reference a bibliographic item, not another metadata record or a single piece of metadata. So I don't think it's quite right. (Kshawkin)

See Syd's call for participation in a working group.

extent element
Instead of

viii, [7]-215 p 20 cm.

we might use elements from the msDescription module and do it this way:

viii, [7]-215 p  <height quantity="20" unit="cm"/>

Had a width been given for this item in the catalog record, in the header it would have been:

viii, [7]-215 p  <width quantity="30" unit="cm"/> <height quantity="20" unit="cm"/>

providing stylesheets
providing stylesheets for header-MARC and header-MODS


 * Black Mesa Technologies has undertaken this work for us (gratis)!

providing tools
providing tools for workflows