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.

Meeting June 17-18, 2014
to come...

Conf Call June 12, 2014
to come...

Conf Call May 28, 2014
It's been our fastest conf call ever! We reported on last weeks activities (not much, but some additions to the GitHub repo) and agreed on a f2f meeting on June 17/18 in Berlin. Next conf call is scheduled for June 12, 10 AM.

Reports on two conferences:
Peter presented on "interoperability of letter collections" and touched on the work of the task force. A lot of people are planning (dreaming) of connecting letter collections. "The old world" – a strong bias against digital editions and only few letter projects presented at the conference. Nevertheless Marcel waved the correspDesc flag during his talk.
 * 1) Berlin: "Datenmodellierung in digitalen Briefeditionen und ihre interpretatorische Leistung. Ontologien, Textgenetik und Visualisierungsstrategien"
 * 1) Vienna: Editorenkolloquium

correspSearch
Stefan Dumont from the BBAW created a web service for querying correspDesc data. This web service will be presented as an open beta at the end of June. During his work on correspSearch he encountered several bugs and missing features in the CIF standard that need to be addressed now. (see next point)

proposed schema changes

 * rename addressee to receiver? We decided not to change that right now but we will wait for the natives to chime in.
 * CIF: @when-iso instead of @when: For the web service there is a strong need for standardized date formats. --> Yes, will implement
 * CIF: clearly defined meta data with information about origin, person in charge, last change date etc. --> Yes, will implement
 * CIF: shall @notBefore be required to have a counterpart @notAfter? --> No, rejected

Roadmap

 * Next conf call on May 28, 10 AM
 * f2f meeting on June 17/18 (date needs to be finalized)
 * feature request due before next Council f2f, June 30
 * correspSearch will go public at the end of June

Conf Call March 17, 2014
Peter gave a short summary of the workshop “Digitising experiences of migration” (Mellon Centre for Migration Studies, Omagh, Northern Ireland, March 14-15) – and we discussed the difficulties with lacking authority-file-data for our Correspondence Interchange Format (CIF). Marcel (located at the Austrian National Library) will have a look at Europeana’s interchange format to find out whether it could be combined with the task force’s CIF; Peter will get in contact with the BBAW in order to create some sort of web service, which will facilitate for data interchange. Roadmap: June 2014 TEI-Council in Oxford – proposal should be ready for feature request – October 2014: TEI-Meeting (SIG meeting and/or -workshop)

Conf Call Feb. 18, 2014
We discussed the  element, decided to change its name to  (according to ). Then we dealt with the preparation of the presentation in Berlin, Feb. 26, 2014 (workshop: “Briefeditionen um 1800 – Schnittstellen finden und vernetzen”). To-dos: enhancing second draft ODD, enhancing text of proposal (theoretical considerations, preceeding work). Inform the communtiy via mailing list to get some feedback.

Presentation Feb. 02, 2014
Short presentation of the element  (as developed so far) at workshop on editions of correspondence around 1800 at Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences in Berlin. The slides of the presentation (in German) are available here and at GitHub.

Next conf call will be on March 17, 2014.

Conf Call Jan. 30, 2014
Discussing new changes in schema ( now repeatable, and @ref in  possible, probably new name for  needed, etc.). Latest version of the proposal can be found on GitHub. Proposal fits well for encoding e-mails. Looking at real example of encoding a letter with our schema, discussing detailed structure and flat structure (CIF).

Meeting Jan. 13-14, 2014
Meeting of task force in Berlin. We pushed forward the work on an ODD file for the correspondence module with the new element  (and several child elements). The result can be found at GitHub: proposal.xml. While the formal specification can already be considered alpha (i.e. you can build a schema and try it out), we are still behind enhancing the documentation with information on background, theoretical considerations, notes on implementation, etc.

Next conf call will be on Jan. 30 (09:30 CET), 2014.

Conf Call Jan. 8, 2014
This conf call mainly dealt with the preparation of the face-to-face meeting in Berlin on Jan. 13-14. To-do-list for this meeting: reading of Mariana's e-mail and files, and of literature mentioned during conf calls (editio, Emert, etc.).

General to-do-list: enhancing second draft ODD, enhancing text of proposal, have a look at Genetic Editions proposal.

We decided to put together a bibliography of literature on editing letters that will help writing our proposal.

All minutes from TEI conferences in TEI now online here.

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/information given within  will be:, , , , , <dateAddressee>, Korrespondenzstelle, type of correspondence, bearer and method of message, information whether there is an envelope or not (description of envelope in <msDsc> and transcription in ).

What will not be encoded within <correspDesc> because it is not letter-specific:, printed things like form fields or letterheads, and postage stamps - all this information is encoded within <msDesc>.

There will be a short presentation of the work of the SIG Correspondence and especially the <correspDesc> 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 <correspDesc> - 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 <dalf:letDesc> element as well as the <correspDesc> 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 <sealDesc>) 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