SIG:Correspondence/handbook

Encoding Correspondence. A handbook on encoding correspondence in TEI-XML and DTABf

Although the TEI Guidelines contain suggestions for the encoding of correspondence materials, there are still open questions on how to deal with several structural and textual occurrences. This situation led to the idea of holding a workshop to discuss problematic cases of correspondence encoding in TEI, and to develop solutions as well as potential extensions to the TEI.

This workshop was held by the conveners of the SIG Correspondence (Stefan Dumont, Sabine Seifert) and a representative for the DTA Base Format (Susanne Haaf) at the BBAW in Berlin in October 2018. All problems discussed concern aspects of letter coding: from letter-specific text structures to correspondence metadata. To name but a few, problems with <postscript> or <salute> were treated as well as the use of <correspDesc> for specific correspondence situations. The Correspondence Metadata Interchange Format (CMIF) was also developed further. The problems, discussions, and solutions of this workshop were summarized as handbook-like articles by the workshop participants. There will also be a best practice guide for quick access.

The publication will be released step by step as Open Access from the end of 2019 on with the possibility for the community to review and comment.

Topics covered:

• openers and closers
• postscripts
• pre-printed parts like letterheads
• addresses
• unclear information in meta data
• envelopes
• seals, stamps, post stamps
• attachments
• correspondence metadata interchange format v2
• authority files
• etc.