TEI Metadata

James Cummings

@jamescummings

http://slides.com/jamescummings/tei-metadata-mca

The <teiHeader>

  • The TEI header was designed with two goals in mind:

    • needs of bibliographers and librarians trying to document what were called 'electronic books'

    • needs of text analysts and digital editors trying to document ‘coding practices’ within digital resources

  • The result is that discussion of the header tends to be pulled in two directions...

  • Where can I read about this?

    • Chapter 2: The TEI Header

    • Chapter 10: Manuscript Description

Librarian's Header

  • Conforms to standard bibliographic models
  • Easily mapped to METS/EAD/MARC and other library metadata formats
  • Based on TEI for Libraries Special Interest Group
  • Pressure for more specific constraints
  • Prefers structured data over loose prose

Editor's Header

  • Polite nod to bibliographic practices
  • Supports (potentially) huge range of miscellaneous information
  • Different codes of practice in different communities
  •  Often concerned with editorial principles
  • Mixture of tightly controlled and lose prose

Most headers are somewhere between the two

A Minimal Header

  • fileDesc (with titleStmt & title), publicationStmt, and sourceDesc are all that are required

<teiHeader>: Required vs Optional Components

Example <titleStmt>s

Example <publicationStmt>

Example <sourceDesc>

Or your <sourceDesc> could have one or more <msDesc> elements

Example <msDesc>

Example <msContents>

Example <physDesc>

Example <history>

Other <msDesc> components

  • <additional>: Containing <adminInfo> (e.g. custodial history) and <surrogates>
  • <msPart>: to describe individual parts of a composite manuscript
  • <msFrag>: to describe manuscript fragments as part of a virtual whole

TEI header module elements:

TEI manuscript description module elements: