SIG:MSS

TEI Special Interest Group on Manuscripts (TEI MS SIG)

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. The SIG was originally setup by Elena Pierazzo, Susan Schreibman, and Edward Vanhoutte. It is currently convened by Gerrit Brüning and Dot Porter.

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

Achievements

The SIG’s most important achievements were in the field of the representation of primary sources, resulting in the proposals of the working group on Genetic Editions which were submitted as “An Encoding Model for Genetic Editions” and largely incorporated in the TEI Guidelines.

Important work was done towards a revision of the chapter on critical apparatus, see working group on Critical Apparatus / Textual Variance.

Agenda of this SIG

Revision of the chapter on critical apparatus; issues of variation; 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). See

• Critical Apparatus

and the following threads on sourceforge, TEI-L, and SIG-L:

• http://sourceforge.net/p/tei/bugs/357/
• http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=TEI-L;bfa42e32.1310
• http://listserv.brown.edu/archives/cgi-bin/wa?A2=TEI-MS-SIG;ad41772a.1401
• “App. Crit. state of play and questions” and related threads on SIG-L from January 2014.
• “<rdg>s that go on and on“ (July 2014)
• http://sourceforge.net/p/tei/feature-requests/521/

Revision of the chapter on manuscript description; see working group on MSS Description.

Continuing and extending the work on the chapter on the representation of primary sources, see Sandbox for Genetic Editing.

Further issues:

• how to encode fragments
• 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

Past Meetings

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 2007. 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.

More recent meetings:

• Agenda SIG meeting, London 8 November 2008
• Minutes SIG meeting, Ann Arbor 14 November 2009
• Minutes SIG meeting, Zadar 12 November 2010
• Minutes SIG meeting, Würzburg 14 October 2011
• Minutes SIG meeting, Rome, 3 October 2013

Useful links

Manuscript Description

Projects, resources, guidelines concerning MS description.

• TEI P5: 13. Manuscript Description
• ENRICH project - standardising and aggregating medieval manuscript descriptions. See also OUCS ENRICH Website containing ENRICH Schemas, ODD, Documentation and Training Materials.
• 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 Editions

• Digital Mishnah Project
• Digital Vercelli Book
• DALF: Digital Archive of Letters in Flanders
• Partial Transcription of John Lydgate's "Fall of Princes"
• The Chymistry of Isaac Newton
• The Newton Project
• Chroniques latines de Saint-Denis : critical edition using TEI P4 (but we hope to migrate in P5 this year) : XML Files
• Digital Mitford: The Mary Russell Mitford Archive
• Mark Twain Project Online

Manuscript Transcription

Projects, resources, guidelines concerning MS transcription.

• CDL Encoding Guidelines for Manuscripts and Rare Books
• Digital Scriptorium (see especially the TRANSCRIPTION DTD and DESCRIPTION DTD pages).
• EpiDoc, guidelines for transcribing ancient texts
• Guidelines for the electronic edition of the skaldic corpus
• The Menota handbook
• The Newton Project: Implementing and Exploiting XML
• The Walt Whitman Archive Encoding Guidelines for Poetry Manuscripts
• Transcriptional Protocols: Piers Plowman Electronic Archive and SEENET
• Réflexions sur l'utilisation de la TEI pour encoder les sources diplomatiques and Guide du balisage du Cartulaire blanc : two resources in French
• Base de Français Médiéval - MSS Encoding Guidelines (in French)
• TEI: Critical Apparatus Cheatsheet
• Bdinski sbornik: Manuscript and text