Exhibits Encoding

These are brief notes for the moment, but will be fleshed out over time. See the Women Writers in Context publication system wiki page for more detailed and up-to-date information.

Getting started

To start encoding an exhibit, follow these steps:

1. Open the SVN client and navigate to the exhibits directory. Control-click on the directory to select it, and then choose "Update" from the menu that appears. This will ensure that you are working with the most current version of the data.
2. In Oxygen, navigate to the exhibits/under_construction directory, and open the exhibit_template.xml file. This is a skeleton file containing the basic structure of an exhibit. 
3. Save a copy of the file (using "Save as...") under a different name. Filenames should start with the author's last name, followed by a significant word from the exhibit title, all lower case: carriger.drama.xml
4. Complete the basic metadata for the exhibit: the title of the exhibit in title case, and the author's name with the first name first (e.g. Maureen Bell)
5. Enter the "argument" of the exhibit (basically a short abstract) in <argument>
6. Encode the body of the exhibit following the guidelines below. If you are working from a Word document, you can copy and paste sections of the text into your XML file, but be sure to check for any italicized words or other formatting that will need to be represented in the markup. If you are working from a converted XML file (e.g. after using OxGarage to convert from Word) you may need to check the encoding to make sure it matches our practice.
7. Go through the file and encode all bibliographic references so that they point to the Works Cited.
8. After you've finished the encoding and are familiar with the content of the exhibit, add topic keywords on the @ana attribute of <text>, and add references to any relevant events in the <listEvent> in the TEI header.

Checklist

When you're finished encoding the exhibit, go back through the original submission and check it against your encoding to make sure:

• all footnotes have been captured
• all bibliographic citations are links to the Works Cited
• all renditional highlighting in the submission (italics, bold, other formatting the author may have used) has been reflected appropriately in the exhibit. Note that in some cases this may mean translating the author's intentions a bit: if the author uses bold type for emphasis, we still just encode it as <emph>.

Then check the encoding again on its own to make sure:

• you've encoded a <listEvent>
• you've included topical keywords and a background image on the <text> element
• all personal names are linked to the personography; if the exhibit deals with people who aren't yet included, they will need to be added to the personography with a role of "exhibit".
• your file is valid
• you've encoded at least one "pull quote"

Basic parts of an encoded exhibit

An exhibit has the following basic structure (reflected in the exhibit template):

• a simple TEI header where we store metadata for the file
• an <argument> which is like a short abstract, used as a teaser
• one or more
  elements containing the individual sections of the exhibit
• one or more final
  elements that contain lists of sources and works cited. 
• one or more "pull quotes": especially quotable phrases or passages that are suitable for pulling out and highlighting in the display

Names, titles, etc.

All personal names should be encoded with <persName>. The @ref attribute points to the ID of the <person> as listed in persons.xml:

<persName ref="persons.xml#mcavendis.neu">Margaret Cavendish</persName>

All place names should be encoded with <placeName>; we do not use @ref for places at this time.

All organizational names should be encoded with <orgName>; we do not use @ref for organizational names at this time.

All titles of works mentioned should be encoded with <title>. The @rend attribute gives the rendition for the title; possible values include:

• "italic"
• "quoted"

Notes

There are two types of notes in our exhibits:

• <note type="annotation">: these are like conventional footnotes, containing some additional explanation that the author does not want to embed in the main flow of the argument. Footnotes should not be used for simple citations; all citations should be converted to author/page number format and should point to a full bibliographic reference in the Works Cited section at the end of the exhibit. However, footnotes may contain citations as long as this isn't their only content.
• <note type="context">: these are notes that provide additional context for understanding the content of the exhibit. For instance, if the exhibit includes a short quotation from a poem, we might include the full poem (or a longer excerpt) in a context note. Context notes also carry a @subtype attribute, whose value is "text" (for notes with textual content) or "media" (for notes that contain an embedded audio file, image, or video).

Notes of both types are linked to the text using two links:

• the <note> itself has a @target that points to the @xml:id of the element it is anchored to
• the anchoring element (which can be a paragraph, a word, a name, a quotation, essentially any element) has a @corresp that points to the @xml:id of the <note>. 

Information about events

Each exhibit should have at least a handful of events associated with it; these are encoded as <event> elements in the eventography (events.xml) and then referenced from a <listEvent> in the TEI header for the exhibit:

<profileDesc>
	<wex:contentDesc>
		<event wex:ref="events.xml#fireoflondon.nx"/>
		<event wex:ref="events.xml#statuteofann.qk"/>
	</wex:contentDesc>
</profileDesc>

Each event listed in the events.xml file is given a unique identifier which consists of a brief descriptive string (e.g. "fireoflondon") and a two-letter suffix that serves as a disambiguator. The @wex:ref attribute says, in effect, "go to the events.xml file and find the <event> that has the identifer fireoflondon.nx".

The list of events is used to generate a timeline associated with the exhibit.

Images, figures, diagrams

Images included in the body of the exhibit are encoded with <figure>, which contains the following elements:

• <graphic>: this element serves to carry a @url attribute which points to the image file (see example below for file path)
• <ab type="caption">: used for a brief descriptive caption, including the source of the image
• <ab type="credit">: used for whatever credit line is required by the source of the image

<figure>
	<graphic url="assets/gfx/StationersHall_Nichols.jpg"/>
	<ab type="caption">Two historical views of Stationers’ Hall
	  in London, the first depicting the structure in 1670 and 
	  the second illustrating its appearance in 1800. From 
	  <title ref="http://books.google.com/books?id=VrIKAAAAYAAJ" type="m">
	  Historical Notices of the Worshipful Company of Stationers of 
	  London</title>, 1861.
	</ab>
	<ab type="credit">Public domain; <ref target="http://books.google.com">
	   Google Books</ref>.
	</ab>
</figure>

Quotations, direct speech, other uses of quotation marks

All material quoted from a source outside the text should be encoded with <quote>. 

Any direct quoted speech (e.g. reported dialogue) should be encoded with <said>.

Titles within quotations should be encoded as <title rend="quoted">.

Any use of quotation marks other than the above should be encoded with .

Bibliographic references and works cited

All citations of sources within the flow of the text should be in author/page number form (e.g. "Clegg, 123") and should be encoded with <ref>. The @target attribute of <ref> points to the Works Cited at the end of the exhibit:

<ref target="#bibl_clegg_1997">Clegg</ref>

Every exhibit should include a Works Cited section listing any secondary sources quoted or cited in the text. If the exhibit references both primary sources (i.e. works contemporary with the materials in the WWP textbase) and secondary sources, these should be listed in separate "Primary Sources" and "Secondary Sources" sections. Each of these sections should be encoded as a separate

with a <head> indicating what type of list is included. Within the

, the list of works is encoded with <listBibl>:

<div>
	<head>Works Cited</head>
	<listBibl>
		<bibl xml:id="bibl_barash_1996">
			<author>Barash,Carol</author>. <title rend="italic">English Women’s 
			Poetry <date from="1649" to="1714">1649-1714</date>: Politics, 
			Community and Linguistic Authority</title>. Oxford: Oxford UP, 
			<date when="1996">1996</date>.<idno type="OCLC">34029845</idno>
		</bibl>		<bibl xml:id="bibl_barash_1996">
 <author>Barash,Carol</author>. <title rend="italic">English Women’s Poetry <date from="1649" to="1714">1649-1714</date>: Politics, Community and Linguistic Authority</title>. Oxford: Oxford UP, <date when="1996">1996</date>.<idno type="OCLC">34029845</idno></bibl>
	</listBibl>
</div>

Within the <bibl> element, we encode the following pieces of information:

• <author>
• <title>
• <date> with @when
• any identifying numbers that would help us provide links to the source: e.g. OCLC numbers, links to Google Books, etc.