First Encounter with TEI

I have never been worked with a language like TEI. In my mind, computer science languages like Python and Javascript are objective. If I want to achieve a certain functionality, I use specific grammars to do it, and the boundaries for different grammars like list and dictionary are really clear. However, for me TEI is kind of a confusing language. First I need to read the whole document, and then mark up any important elements by using different tags.

Since don’t have background with TEI, I used the TEI website a lot to make sure that I used appropriate tags when marking up both of the text. Even I tried to mark up as accurately as possible, there’re still some places I don’t know which tag to use and thus I chose the tag I think is the most appropriate. This could be potentially problematic, since like in Python, I’m able to test whether I used the correct thing or not, but in TEI as long as it’s a green box in the upper right corner, I have no further information. In the Poe text, first I marked up all the diplomatic elements using for example, <emph></emph> to show author’s emphasis on words here “__word__”. Then I marked up other elements like using <persName><persName> for a person’s name. At first this was very hard for me, since basically have no understanding about what tag should I use, so for a person’s name, I used <name type = ‘person’></name> at first. The only information I can get for TEI is basically from its website, which has some examples for each tag, but the explanation is not really detailed. Therefore I thought <name type=’person’> is appropriate here. However, after I’ve asked the difference between those two tags in class, I realized that “name” here is like a assigned tag not like the real person’s “name” we usually used in our daily life, so I had to change all my markups. For the Declaration of Independence the mark up process is different. Basically I was researching about a signer Samuel Chase on Wikipedia, and add the relevant information to the template. I think this is much easier since all the tags are provided so that I don’t have to consider that much about which tag to use as for Poe.

Figure 1. Mark up for Declaration of Independence

Figure 2. Mark up for Poe

I do believe that my searching for the appropriate tag to use on TEI website familiarizes me with TEI and helps me to better understand the subject matter. In this process, I become a co-worker of the text according to Rasmussen. “The co-worker seeks to go beyond the user and reader roles, and to contribute actively to the scholarly enterprise. This could consist of making annotations, reading proofs, adding encodings, or contributing in other ways to the site’s total production of knowledge.” During the close reading and encoding process, I made notes, did extra research and annotates the text based on my understanding, which will definitely help me to understand the subject matter. The intended target for the Poe text should be general readers, but it’s used scholarly as we were marking up the text. When creating the digital edition, the editors must have noticed and made their editorial choice to keep a limited number of elements. This might let us not able to understand and decode all text correctly, but it’s unavoidable like mentioned in the Pierazzo. “Digital editors must consider the needs of the users when preparing their publication and, in consequence, considerations about what kind of users to expect and how to meet their needs have become a common concern for any kind of digital publication.”