In the Header, but Where?

The TEI header is a valuable but sometimes overlooked
part of a TEI document. The header is the
main source of documentation for a TEI encoded electronic
document, and has been created to describe “an
encoded work so that the text itself, its source, its encoding,
and its revisions are all thoroughly documented.”i It
is described as an electronic analogue to the title page of
a printed book, but it is really much more than that. The
header provides a location to place any kind of information
about a text that should not or need not be described
within the body of the text itself—for example, narrative
descriptions of a series of illustrations, or of individual
illustrations; definitions of terms that occur in the text;
demographic information about the people involved in
the creation of the text, its TEI transcription, or mentioned
in the text; even complete descriptions of physical
objects (using the <msDescription> element). All
these can be placed in the header and then linked to passages
in the body of the text using one or more of a variety
of available linking mechanisms. This combination
of digital textual data (stored in <text>) and digital
header metadata (stored in <teiHeader>) provides a
method for description that is generally clear and flexible.
Witness that several other popular XML vocabularies
use an analogous system of separating metadata from
data immediately as the two children of the root node,
with the metadata coming first. (Notably XHTMLii and
DocBookiii follow this pattern.) However, the placement
of certain specific metadata within the header is not always
so clear.
The TEI Guidelines often recommend that users place
a specific piece or kind of metadata in the TEI header,
but sometimes they do not specify into which area of
the header the particular information should be placed.
E.g., the <gap> element “indicates a point where material
has been omitted in a transcription, whether for
editorial reasons described in the TEI header, as part
of sampling practice, or because...”. However, a search
through the chapter on the TEI header does not clearly
suggest where exactly those editorial reasons should
be described (although there is an example of <samplingDecl>
which does explain the use of <gap>
for editorial reasons).
There are some 218 references to the TEI header in the
source of the TEI Guidelines that are neither within the
chapter that directly discusses the TEI header, nor are
within an example, a heading, or the <teiHeader> of
the TEI Guidelines themselves. In how many of these instances
do the Guidelines make clear recommendations?
And when there are no clear guidelines, how do users
decide how to use the header?
In our paper, we will answer the question “in how many
places do the TEI Guidelines recommend placing information
in the TEI header, but do not specify exactly
where?”. Furthermore, we hope to examine each such
occurrence in some more detail, even recommending
where such information be placed for as many occurrences
as possible.
For some such occurrences, we also hope to ask a set of
TEI users where they are placing this information, or, if
they do not happen to need to record this particular type
of metadata, where they would be inclined to place it if
they did.
Finally, based on the research conducted, we hope to be
able to come to some broad conclusions as to how much
of a problem this issue actually represents.
We will first study the Guidelines to find all the instances
where users are told to use the header, but are not told
exactly how. We will then conduct at least informal
conversations with TEI users (both long-term users and
novices), if not use a formal survey instrument, to try to
ascertain how they do (or would be inclined to) act in the
given situations. We will discuss what impact the solutions
users come up with might have on both interchange
and interoperability. We will also attempt to ascertain
how much of a perceived problem this issue really presents
for these users. Our own experience with the TEI, as
users and developers, will also be helpful for this study.
Finally, for as many of the cases for which the TEI
Guidelines do not make a specific recommendation as
possible, we will attempt to provide a suggestion for precisely
where in the TEI header the information should be
placed. We do this with the hope that it will both improve
the interchange the TEI supports, and lower the barrier to
adoption of TEI by new projects.
iBurnard, Lou and Syd Bauman, eds. “The TEI Header”
Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange.
2007-11-01. http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5¬doc/html/HD.html (24 Nov 2007).
ii“XHTML” The Extensible HyperText Markup Language
(Second Edition). 2002-08-01. http://www.
w3.org/TR/xhtml1/ (24 Nov 2007).
iiiWalsh, Norm and Leonard Muellner. DocBook, The Definitive
Guide. O’Reilly, 1999. urn:isbn:1-56592-580-7.