The Use of TEI and OAI in Manuscript, an Informational-Analytical System

Currently there are at least a few hundred ancient Slavic
manuscripts of the 11th to 14th centuries, which, despite
their significant scholarly, cultural, and historic value, are not
accessible to a wide range of researchers of various specialties
and to all who are interested in Russian history and culture.
The reason is simple: a large portion of the manuscripts are still
unpublished, and if they are published, these editions are
rareties, accessible only in major research libraries, which are
often located far from scholars' places of work. Even publishing
a manuscript often requires constant consultation of the original,
especially if studying its paleography, appearance, or other
similar questions. Furthermore, existing print editions
unfortunately usually lack reference material necessary for
getting acquainted with a text and studying it, and the
manuscripts themselves are published with poor quality. The
solution to the inaccessibility of ancient and medieval
manuscripts for research, teaching, and popular use is the
creation of electronic publications capable not only of replacing
print editions but also of exceeding their capabilities: (a) by
providing continual access to digital copies of manuscripts and
reference material on the Internet; (b) by providing the user
with the capability of retrieving data from a multifunctional
interface not only on the level of meta- and analytical data but
also on the level of grammatical, semantic, and thematic
characteristics of texts; and (c) by allowing collaborative work
on a manuscript.
One example of an information system designed to solve
some of the above problems is Manuscript, an
informational-analytical system.
Manuscript is oriented toward the entry, storage, automatic
manipulation, research, and publication of ancient texts having
an identical graphico-orthographic appearance and structure to
the original. Currently Manuscript contains a few dozen unique
ancient and medieval Slavic texts.
Currently Manuscript consists of a few multifunctional modules
that interact with a single database containing a hierarchically
structured data: • a specialized editor,
• a query and retrieval module,
• a module for electronic publishing,
• a module of linguistic dictionaries, and
• a module for loading texts and reference material for print
publication.
The main task right now of the team behind Manuscript is to
present the accumulated information for analysis and study by
a wide range of researchers. The main path: to create specialized
modules intended for muti-function, user-friendly, and
straightforward manipulation of the data. The second task is to
create the means to exchange meta-, analytical, and textual data
between teams of researchers creating analogous collections
of material, with the goal of presenting users with the ability
to use manuscript- and text-specific tools for working with
ancient documents, created by various teams.
It's essential to use standard formats and protocols to maximize
access to the various tools for aggregating information in
Manuscript.
The Open Archive Initiative (OAI) and Text Encoding
Initiative (TEI) were chosen as the basis for solving this
task:
• OAI – for indexing the existing texts and their fragments;
• TEI – for presenting meta- and analytical information, and
likewise the texts themselves.
Manuscript is currently working to become an OAI data
provider. A new module is being developed to present the
metadata in Dublin Core format. This module will allow the
gathering of metadata not only from the texts themselves but
also from their fragments (various elements of the hierarchy).
Users can retrieve metadata or full text from Manuscript in TEI
XML format using a unique identifier.
The TEI Guidelines are well-established around the world, so
it was entirely logical for the developers of Manuscript to use
it for the metadata and full text of the manuscripts.
Manuscript uses a network model of data for describing the
objects (entities) of manuscripts and the relations between them,
so the main problem with using TEI was XML's requirement
of a strict hierarchy. One consequence of this is that it's
impossible to receive all information about a text in Manuscript
in one document.
Two modules are being developed to integrate the technology
of Manuscript with the TEI.
The module for storage and manipulation of meta- and
analytical data is intended for working with archeographical,
textological, and other findings from the manuscripts, texts,
and fragments themselves, and also for formulating queries and
retrieving information using these findings. Searching in this
module is possible only using meta- and analytical data.
A special module processes user queries for retrieving certain
elements of text in TEI format from Manuscript. The main
capabilities of the module are the following:
• retrieving of any element of text, stored in Manuscript as
an independent unit, in TEI format;
• setting priorities in the creation of a TEI document: This
option is necessary in order to get around the
single-hierarchy limitation of XML. The user can rank the
priority of various structures within a document;
• receiving meta- and analytical information with or without
full text;
• The queried document is created at the moment of query,
so any change will be available immediately.
Manuscript and its tools are being continually developed.
During the presentation, Manuscript, including the
above modules and technologies, will be demonstrated.
Translated from the Russian by Kevin S. Hawkins.