February 19, 2015

Training and Mentorship We’re going to be hiring new encoders and so there will be an opportunity for people to lead parts of the training meetings. I’m currently breaking up the training sessions into modules; I’ll be circulating a list of modules and you can sign on to lead one or two of these. This will be a good opportunity to put our “Teaching the TEI” skills into action. For people who want to do training, we’ll meet ahead of time to make sure we’re all on the same page for content & pedagogy. We’ll also be asking for people to be mentors to the new encoders, basically people they can reach out to if they have any questions.

<rs> with @type of "title" Nicole brought in an example of a reference to the “Fable of the foxes” and we talked about this as a case where <title> wasn’t appropriate, but that would be useful to track for the future, in the event we’re able to do more extensive bibliography referencing in the WWO collection. So, we’re going to start using <rs> with @type of “title” for cases like this one, references to “the Bible,” and other places where texts are referenced in ways not specific enough to merit <title>. Syd is going to update the schema accordingly and I’m going to compile a list of examples of when this kind of encoding would be needed.

“Difficult Names” Following up on that discussion, I brought up a section in the old documentation that we’re going to expand and add to our current documentation. I’m pasting the key details at the end of this email, for your immediate reference.

<said> with Hypothetical Questions and Imagined Speech or Thoughts Both hypothetical questions (you may ask “why would anyone do that?”) or imagined speech or thoughts (the boy may wonder why his mother is “so ill natured as to squash a bug”), should be encoded with <said> since they can be plausibly construed as speech or thoughts, and don’t exist somewhere else, the way <quote>s do (even quotes of imaginary things).

<measure> and <bibl> in Advertisements We discovered that some texts encode prices and other <measure>-type information inside of <bibl> in advertisements for books, while others put <measure> outside of <bibl>. After some discussion and looking at a few examples, we decided it is actually most sensible to follow the text’s own lead on what to include within <bibl>—in cases where the price information is clearly part of the “sentence” of the book’s title & author, or where the rendition is placing such information with the title & authorship, it makes sense to put it inside of <bibl>. In other cases, the price might be separate from the bibliographic information and should be encoded outside of <bibl>.

On difficult names: Given the complexity of the WWP’s system for encoding names, and given the range of names and name-like terms in our textbase, there will always be borderline cases which need to be decided individually. The following is a list of difficult cases and their proper encoding.

God, Lord, Holy Ghost, Holy Spirit: these are not personal names. Encode with <mcr>, only if renditionally distinct.

Jesus Christ (but not “Christ” alone), Lucifer, Satan, Beelzebub: these are names and should be encoded with <persName>

Elysium, Tartarus, Hades, Valhalla, Heaven, Earth: encode with <placeName>

Israel: this is a particularly tricky case, since although in the Bible it usually refers to a collectivity of people, it also may be used in ways which are closer to a <placeName>. Different translations of the Bible may give different emphasis, so it may be difficult to determine for certain which usage is really meant. Encoders should be aware that the <name> usage is the more likely; a phrase like “land of Israel” will usually mean something like “land of the people called Israel”. However, they should be alert for the possibility of <placeName>. Finally, “Israel” may refer specifically to Jacob, in which case it should be encoded with <persName>.