<oo>→<var> XML and TEI for Slavic philology

Maintained by: David J. Birnbaum (djbpitt@gmail.com) Last modified: 2014-09-16T13:13:47+0000

Description and goals

This three-day hands-on workshop, Monday, 2014-09-15 through Wednesday, 2014-09-17, provides eight and a half hours of instruction in using eXtensible Markup Language (XML) and the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) guidelines to encode and describe medieval manuscript materials. The instructors are:

• David J. Birnbaum, a medieval Slavic philologist who teaches digital humanities at the University of Pittsburgh (djbpitt@gmail.com, http://www.obdurodon.org)
• Andrej Bojadžiev, a medieval Slavic philologist who teaches at Kliment Oxridski University, Sofia (aboy@uni-sofia.bg, http://www.slav.uni-sofia.bg/index.php/departments/cyrillomethodian-studies/441-andrej-bojadzhiev.html)
• Helena Bermúdez Sabel, a medieval Iberian philologist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, Spain (helena.bermudez@usc.es)

The workshop is part of the Textual heritage and information technologies (El’Manuscript-2014) conference, Varna, Bulgaria, 2014-09-15–2014-09-20

Before the workshop

• Download the <oXgyen/> XML editor from http://www.oxygenxml.com and install it on your laptop. You will need to request a free, fully-functional thirty-day license, which you can do at the download site.
• Read: An even gentler introduction to XML.
• In the hands-on portion of the workshop we will work with Church Slavonic manuscript materials. If you would prefer, you are welcome instead to bring your own materials (plain-text manuscript description or transcription).

Workshop schedule

Monday, 2014-09-15: Introduction to XML and the general TEI infrastructure

• Session 1, 5:00–6:15. Introduction to XML (slides )
• Session 2, 6:15–7:30. Introduction to TEI (slides )

Tuesday, 2014-09-16: Basic TEI encoding for manuscript description

• Session 3, 2:30–3:45: Manuscript description (slides )
  • Don’t click; download: Description of the Enina Apostol (XML file)
  • Section 10 of TEI P5: Manuscript description
  • Encyclopaedia Slavica Sanctorum
  • The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander (search for Ivan Alexander; UK, London, British Library, Add MS 39627; in English)
  • Stanislav’s menologion (September, October, November; in Bulgarian)
  • Manuscripts at Kliment Oxridski University, Sofia
  • Catalog of Icelandic manuscripts at the Árni Magnússon Institute, Reykjavík (in Icelandic; some content also in English and Danish)
• Coffee break, 3:45–4:15
• Session 4, 4:15–6:30: Encoding critical editions in TEI (slides )
  • See also Section 12 of TEI P5: Critical apparatus
  • Rus′ primary chronicle (Повесть временных лет)

Wednesday, 2014-09-17: Basic TEI encoding for manuscript transcription

• Session 5, 2:30–3:45: Encoding of manuscripts using the TEI (slides, by Matthew Driscoll )
• Coffee break, 3:45–4:15
• Session 6, 4:15–6:30: Taking stock
  • Sample XML projects at http://www.obdurodon.org and http://dh.obdurodon.org (student course projects)
  • What next (slides )

Documents

Projects

Editions of manuscripts and texts

• Bdinski sbornik (Codex gandavensis slavicus 408)
• Codex Suprasliensis
• The Rus′ primary chronicle (Povest′ vremennyx let)

Non-reading views of manuscript and textual information

• Daniel the prisoner: a virtual florilegium
• Medieval Slavic menologies
• Plectogram sample (Physiologus texts in the Repertorium corpus)

Catalogs, editions, and portals for Slavic manuscripts and texts

• Russia, Sergiev posad, Holy Trinity-St. Sergius lavra
• Библотека Фронтистеса: древнеславянские памятники
• The Repertorium of Old Bulgarian literature and letters

XML and TEI

• The TEI Guidelines
  • Chapter 10: Manuscript description
  • Chapter 11: Representation of primary sources
• Guidelines to Repertorium Initiative XML model for manuscript descriptions (Andrej Bojadžiev, Scripta & e-Scripta 10–11 (2012): 9–103)
• Digital.Humanities @ Oxford Summer School 2013 handbook
  • Transcribing with the TEI begins on p. 67
  • Creating a manuscript description begins on p. 73
• The transcription and description of primary sources using TEI conformant XML (Matthew J. Driscoll, Arnamagnæan Institute)
• Materials from David J. Birnbaum’s Computational methods in the humanities course (see also links to his projects)
• Genetic editions (Elena Pierazzo)
  • An encoding model for genetic editions
  • Proust prototype
  • The Frankenstein notebooks (sample project from the Shelley-Godwin Archive)

Manuscript description

Many on-line manuscript catalogues provide convenient search interfaces. Here are a few that go beyond that, and might be considered models for how digital manuscript descriptions can support not just more convenient access, but also new types of analysis and visualization. All provide access to the underlying raw XML.

• The Repertorium of Old Bulgarian literature and letters provides analytical descriptions of over one hundred early Slavic manuscripts, with tools for searching by repository information and by textual content. The prototype plectogram of Physiologus texts is an early view of functionality currently under development to adding drag-and-drop support to a graphic representation of textual correspondences within the corpus.
• The goal of e-codices (Virtual manuscript library of Switzerland) is to provide access to all medieval and selected early modern manuscripts of Switzerland via a virtual library. At the moment, the virtual library contains 981 manuscripts from 42 different libraries, with more planned, and in addition to the general web site, a free iOS app is available in the Apple store. Note the integration of overview, facsimile, and formatted descriptions, and the provision of the raw XML.
• handrit.is is an analytical catalog of Icelandic manuscripts currently held in several institutions. It provides sophisticated browsing and search facilities and has an integrated personography, which provides access to biographical information about persons mentioned in the descriptions.