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:

abstract appInfo application authority availability biblFull cRefPattern calendar calendarDesc 
catDesc catRef category change classCode classDecl correction correspAction correspContext 
correspDesc creation distributor edition editionStmt editorialDecl encodingDesc extent fileDesc

funder geoDecl handNote hyphenation idno interpretation keywords langUsage language 
licence listChange listPrefixDef namespace normalization notesStmtprefixDef principal 
profileDesc projectDesc publicationStmt punctuation quotation refState refsDecl rendition 
revisionDesc samplingDecl scriptNote segmentation seriesStmt sourceDesc sponsor stdVals 
styleDefDecl tagUsagetagsDecl taxonomy teiHeader textClass titleStmt typeNote xenoData

TEI manuscript description module elements:

accMat acquisition additional additions adminInfo altIdentifier binding bindingDesc catchword
collation collection colophon condition custEvent custodialHist decoDesc decoNote depth dim 
dimensions explicit filiationfinalRubric foliation handDesc height heraldry history incipit 
institution layout layoutDesc locus locusGrp material msContents msDesc msFrag msIdentifier 
msItem msItemStruct msName msPart musicNotation objectDescobjectType origDate 
origPlace origin physDesc provenance recordHist repository rubric scriptDesc seal sealDesc 
secFol signatures source stamp summary support supportDesc surrogates typeDesc 
watermark width