NEHDHPCDI2007

NEH/IMLS Leadership grant

Submitted March 2008 in collaboration with the Brown library

This two-year grant addresses the problem of encoding manuscript materials in a library setting, using TEI. It would fund the development of specifications, schema customization, encoding guidelines, and sample encoded documents, aimed at identifying minimum levels of common, required information that can be captured by library staff. It would convene an advisory group including both manuscript experts, librarians, and text encoding specialists. From the opening paragraph of the proposal:

"The Brown University Women Writers Project (WWP) and the Brown University Library's Center for Digital Initiatives (CDI) propose a collaborative project whose goal is to lower the barriers to full-text digitization of manuscript materials in a digital library setting. We propose to develop, test, document, and disseminate guidelines and best practices for transcribing and encoding manuscripts and other challenging archival materials, giving specific attention to digital library audiences and constraints. By these efforts we seek to increase the quantity, the quality, and the interoperability of archival digitization."

This grant would fund approximately one FTE at the WWP, plus an XML manager to be shared between the WWP and the library. It would start in October 2008 and finish in September 2009. The activities it would fund include:

• Phone interviews and surveys of advisory group and other manuscript experts
• Development of specification and schema customization
• Development of guidelines for encoding
• Encoding of sample texts
• Three meetings of a working group at Brown University to develop and review the above