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TEI post

November 1, 2016 by Tong Tong

I enjoyed marking up texts with TEI, and I think the two assignments we had (the Poe text and the Declaration of Independence exercise) indeed demonstrated how TEI can help us with texts in different but equally strong ways.

For the Poe assignment we focused mainly in semantic mark-up, which I think is a powerful way to analyze and deconstruct the text. Since I’m an English and CH major student, I do a lot with close reading. Usually when I read a text or write an analytical paper, I will at first look for patterns and motifs that appear multiple times. My Poe text is not a conventional murder/detective/crime story, and at least in my part, there are not many exciting plots. However, it is still a classical Poe text for its dark, mysterious atmosphere. Therefore, it occurred to me that it will be great if I can find out patterns that make the text Gothic, and this is exactly something TEI can do. So, I mainly focused on the colors in the text (black, white, blood-red etc.), the emotional feelings (such as fear, aghast, agony etc.) and physical feelings (trembling, thrill, slumber etc). They are important not only due to their repeated appearances but also because that according to the narrator, there are two categories of feelings: emotional and physical. Therefore, the markup of emotions and sensations in the text echoes how Poe manipulates feelings to depict terror. In addition, there are also many words associated with death, and even the word “death” has appeared in the text for several times. I don’t know which tag should I put death into, so I temporarily left death alone. However, I marked up places like “tomb” and “grave,” and also marked up the mythological place such as “Hades.” The associations and significations around these patterns are definitely worth investigating.

The most frequent tag/label I used for Poe text is “state” and “trait” because I didn’t see many places nor characters. This particular text seems to be focused on the individual emotions and sensations, and the paragraphs are mostly descriptions of the state of the narrator. Therefore, I didn’t employ many name tags or place tags in this assignment.

On the other hand, the Declaration of Independence assignment provides a window of how TEI can contribute to (meta)data management. When I read the assignment for the first time, I immediately thought how it could be used to manage the data for my research project. For this assignment, I basically elaborated the biography and paid particular attention to his network. It will be interesting to see how he was connected to different people and how his network, potentially, affected his political stand etc. Since Edward Rutledge did not move around that often, so I didn’t pay much attention to the place, or it will be really interesting to investigate his path and events. Therefore, the tag I used/liked most in this assignment is <listRelation> which can identify different types of relations and can include different people in the relations. One thing I don’t know how to manage is to add more detailed description of the related people. For example, Edward Rutledge’s father is a colonist of Scots-Irish descents which may have direct influence over Edward Rutledge. However, I don’t know how to indicate it in my TEI code.

 

Filed Under: Reflection #2, Reflections

First Encounter with TEI

October 31, 2016 by Iris Fu

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.

poe

Figure 1. Mark up for Declaration of Independence

doi

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.”

Filed Under: Reflection #2, Reflections Tagged With: Declaration of Independence, markup, poe

FYI via TEI

October 30, 2016 by Ella Ekstrom

In regard to the relationship built while encoding text, I do believe that TEI helps you better understand the subject matter and writing itself, and even though the same understanding could be accomplished by hand and paper, it could not be analyzed to the same extent, nor shared with the same ease.

In my experience marking up the semantics within Edgar Allen Poe’s The Murders in the Rue Morgue the first observation I noted was that there were multiple titles and names used to describe the main characters—which I found could pose difficulty if not identified specifically. I also found that it would be most effective to limit the items that I identify to those of most relevance to the story—the evidence from the crime scene. Lastly, I believed that Poe’s use of French and Latin proved to be a significant part of the story as well. So, with this all considered, I framed my markup accordingly. To identify the main characters, I used keys to indicate whom Poe was referring to. For example, “Frenchman” was a term used to reference Dupin, so I encoded it as such: <rs key=”Dupin” type=”person”>Frenchman,</rs>. Next, to identify which items I believed to be evidence, I marked them as such: <rs type=”evidence”>grey human hair</rs>. Finally, when foreign terms were used, I identified them as such: <foreign xml:lang=”latin”>_quondam_</foreign>. Overall, TEI provided precise identification tools that weren’t available in the previous programs we used in class, allowing me to not only categorize key themes or ideas within the story, but also to organize each accordingly by type and their underlying intention. Thus, TEI pushed me to dig into the text deeper, which I might not have done if I were simply formatting the text.

In our most recent project involving the Declaration of Independence, we explored more of the origin behind the documents creation—the analysis of the signers themselves. When filling out the person ID, you are allowed to go into as much or as little detail as required. For Samuel Adams, I was given many choices as to how I could interpret the tags and thereby fill them out. For example, in the affiliation tag, I was given the choice between stating the religious or political affiliation; instead, however, I decided to incorporate both. Thus, I used “n=” to distinguish one from the other: <affiliation n=”Political”>Democratic-Republican</affiliation>. Next, considering Adams did not simply have one occupation, I chronologically listed his professional progression using “n=” as well: <occupation n=”5″>President of the Massachusetts Senate</occupation>. Finally, to indicate those in relationship to Adams, I was not able to use the typical “active” tag, since we solely identified signers of the document with xml:id’s required. So, given the slightly confining nature of the “relation” tag, I expressed the spouses of Adams using “n=”: <relation name=”spouse” active=”#SAMA1″ n=”Elizabeth Checkley”></relation>. Overall, TEI allowed the reader of our document to go beyond simply reading the signatures within the Declaration of Independence to being able to grasp a quick summary of each signer, to see both how they all connect to the document and how the document ties them all together.

For these documents and others we have interacted with during class, they possess the potential to be shaped and formatted in ways that expand beyond merely displaying text. As indicated by Krista Stinne Greve Rasmussen, there is a “distinction between stationary and sequential works: stationary works (such as paintings and sculptures) are conceived in space, while sequential works (such as literature and music) are conceived in time.” These “sequential works” allow us more liberties in regard to their presentation, allowing for original and innovative means in both their formatting and analysis. Now in connection to the use of TEI, these coding liberties extend all the way from being able to identify the author’s syntactical choices to expanding upon the context within the text—providing links to historically relevant information, background information, or even linguistic origins of certain words or phrases. As stated by Elena Pierazzo, “for digital editions based on text encoding the editorial interventions are all present at once in the source, they are just not displayed at once.” I believe this accurately articulates how informative TEI can be. TEI can be as dense or as empty as the encoder wants; yet, the depth by which this work goes into is solely revealed by the extent at which the reader interacts with the document. The work done with TEI is not one that is blatantly obvious. Instead, it is embedded within the text, and its recognition is at the mercy of the reader. Thus, both the encoder and decoder play a large role in how the work is perceived and thereby understood.

Filed Under: Reflection #2, Reflections

Reflection Post #2: Prompt

October 27, 2016 by Diane Jakacki

“Encoding Texts”

(Assignment Objectives for Reflection Posts can be found here.

Reflection post #2 due (Sunday, Oct. 30 by 11pm.)
Reflection comment #1 due (Monday, Oct. 31 by 11pm.)

As we’ve discussed in class, TEI encoding offers a kind of close reading at the same time that the encoder is negotiating the text. You’ve already experimented with diplomatic and semantic markup in different ways (Poe assignment), and with the connection between texts and paratexts (Declaration of Independence exercise). Based on those experiences and your reading of Pierazzo and Rasmussen, do you believe that this kind of engagement with text helps you to better understand the subject matter? This is a yes or no question – there is no wrong answer.  But while I respect your opinion, I expect you to support your answer with evidence and examples. Therefore, in your reflection post:

  1. Situate your work in the Poe and Declaration of Independence assignments, giving a brief synopsis of how you worked with each text
  2. Demonstrate your approach to text markup in each case – what tags were most helpful to you? Incorporate two screenshots or code snippets from the work you have done so far
  3. Defend your answer by contextualizing at least two direct quotes from Pierazzo and/or Rasmussen.

Give TWO categories for your post: “Reflections” and “Reflection #2”. These categories are crucial to organizing how readers will find your work.

Filed Under: Prompt, Reflection #2, Reflections

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HUMN 271

Bertrand 012
TR 9:30-11:20am
Dr. Diane Jakacki

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