The UC Transliteracies Project and UCSB Early Modern Center are pleased to announce that they are jointly hosting a three-day Text Encoding Seminar at UCSB instructed by Julia Flanders and Syd Bauman of Brown University.

The goal of the Seminar is to provide faculty and students in the humanities and other fields with an opportunity to examine the significance of text encoding as a scholarly practice, through a combination of discussion and practical experimentation. The grant funding for the seminar also provides supporting resources for researchers who want to experiment with text encoding on their own, or would like to start or become involved with a digital research project. These resources are aimed at faculty and students who have little or no technical experience but are interested in digital textuality. These resources engage with both the technical and the scholarly issues that surround these technologies.

Dr. Julia Flanders is Director of Brown University Women Writers Project; Associate Director of Brown Scholarly Technology Group; Editor-in-chief of Digital Humanities Quarterly; and Vice-chair of the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) Consortium. Syd Bauman is Senior Programmer/Analyst at the Brown University Women Writers Project and the North American Editor of the TEI Guidelines. The bulk of funding for this Seminar is provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which gave the Brown University Women Writers Project a grant to support a series of such seminars around the nation.

Schedule (for a more detailed schedule with descriptions, see below)

All events to be held in the UCSB English Department in South Hall.

Wednesday September 19:
Session 1 (9-10:30): What is Text Encoding?
Session 2 (11-12:30): What and Why is the TEI?
Session 3 (1:30-2:30): Basics of Encoding with the TEI Session 4 (3:00-5:30): Hands-on practice and discussion

Thursday September 20:
Session 5 (9-10:00): More TEI encoding
Session 6 (10:30-12:30): Hands-on practice and discussion
Session 7 (1:30-3): Encoding as Disciplinary Practice
Session 8 (3:30-4:30): Designing a Custom Encoding System with TEI
Wrap-up (4:30-5:30): Final questions and discussion

Friday September 21:
Consultation Session with the UCSB Early Modern Center Ballad Project (9:00-12:00)
Consultation Session with UC Transliteracies Project (2:00-5:00)

Suggested Reading List

No preparation for the seminar or workshops is necessary, but Julia Flanders has suggested that anyone with the time and inclination might want to look at the following chapters from A Companion to Digital Humanities, ed. Susan Schreibman, Ray Siemens, and John Unsworth (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), available online here.

--Chapter 17, "Text Encoding" (Allen Renear): this article gives a good overview of the history and context for the emergence of XML and the TEI;

--Chapter 16, "Marking Texts of Many Dimensions" (Jerome McGann): this article provides a useful complication of the issues Renear presents and also provides some food for thought on the concept of markup itself and its role in scholarly practice;

--Chapter 19, "Modelling: A Study in Words and Meanings" (Willard McCarty): this article prods at how all kinds of digital representations model research objects;

Also, for a basic technical background, anyone who would like to get a head start or would like to delve in more deeply might wish to read "A Gentle Introduction to XML" (online here). Specifically, Julia Flanders suggests that folks read from this essay just the first few sections (through "Attributes"), skipping over anything that seems overly technical.

Detailed schedule:

All events to be held in the UCSB English Department in South Hall.

~~Wednesday September 19~~

Coffee & pastries (8:30-9:00)

Session 1 (9-10:30): What Is Text Encoding?
            South Hall 2635
This introductory session will involve presentations from the instructors followed by discussion, addressing the following topics:
    * What is markup? what is its function? why is it important?
    * Basic concepts of XML: elements, attributes, document structure, and schemas.
    * What is the role of standards and the TEI? why do we need markup languages?

Session 2 (11-12:30): What and Why Is the TEI?
            South Hall 2635
This session will provide an overview of the TEI as an organization and as a text encoding standard through presentations and group discussion, addressing the following topics and issues:
    * The TEI's situation within the landscape of digital humanities scholarship: what are its intellectual affiliations and commitments?
    * How does the TEI function to support the creation of digital humanities texts? what is its role in defining how texts should be represented?
    * How is the TEI currently used, and how is it evolving?
    * What are the alternatives to the TEI? what are the advantages and risks of using a detailed encoding system like the TEI?

Lunch (12:30-1:30)

Session 3 (1:30-2:30): Basics of Encoding with the TEI
            South Hall 2635
This session will introduce the most basic TEI elements and describe their use, using detailed examples from humanities texts (reflecting the interests of participants if possible).

Session 4 (3:00-5:30): Hands-on Practice and Discussion
            (Limited Enrollment; by Registration Only) South Hall 2509 & 2510
In this hands-on session, participants will work alone or in small groups (according to their preference and level of confidence) to encode a set of sample documents, using templates that provide an essential framework (such as the TEI header). By the end of the session, all participants will have completed at least one sample (and probably more). The session will conclude with a discussion of any concepts that need extra attention, and specific discussion of the following issues: What features did all participants encode in the same way? How did their encoding differ? what differences of approach or basic assumptions do the differences reveal?

~~Thursday September 20~~

Coffee & Pastries (8:30-9:00)

Session 5 (9-10:00): More TEI Encoding
            South Hall 1415
Sequel to the "basic encoding" session, introducing additional and more advanced encoding concepts.

Session 6 (10:30-12:30): Hands-on Practice and Discussion
            (Limited Enrollment; by Registration Only) South Hall 2509 & 2510
In this hands-on session, participants will continue hands-on practice in groups using the more advanced encoding concepts to complete a more complex document sample, and will discuss their encoding choices as they proceed.

Lunch (12:30-1:30)

Session 7 (1:30-3): Encoding as Disciplinary Practice
            South Hall 1415
This session will first engage participants in a discussion of the encoding process and the issues it raised, with special emphasis on the following:
    * How does one decide which textual features are important?
    * How much detail is appropriate, useful, necessary? what are the strategic tradeoffs with a more detailed encoding?
    * What disciplinary assumptions does the encoding reflect? Is it possible to have a discipline-free representation of the text? if so, what would it look like?
The second half of the session will focus on the larger impact of text encoding on scholarship and teaching, and in particular on the following questions:
    * How might participants use text encoding methods as part of their teaching?
    * How will scholarly communication be affected by these technologies? what are the positive and negative impacts?
    * How is scholarly research being changed by the use of digital resources? How do we see it developing in the future?
    * What are the next steps? How can participants learn more?

Session 8 (3:30-4:30): Designing a Custom Encoding System with TEI
            South Hall 1415
This session will introduce participants to the TEI's underlying design, which allows for (and indeed encourages) customization to suit specific disciplinary and project-based encoding needs. The presentation will give some background on the practical details, but will also focus discussion on the following issues:
    * Why is it important to define local or disciplinary practice?
    * What is the relation between a customization and the TEI Guidelines as a whole?
    * What are the advantages and disadvantages of different types of customization?

Wrap-up (4:30-5:30): Final Questions and Discussion

~~Friday September 21~~

Coffee & Pastries (8:30-9:00)

Consultation Session with the UCSB Early Modern Center English Broadside Ballad Archive Project (9:00-12:00)
            South Hall 2635
For information about the English Broadside Ballad Archive Project, see here

Lunch (12:00-1:30)

Consultation Session with UC Transliteracies Project (2:00-5:00)
            South Hall 2635
For information about the Transliteracies project, see here.