LEMDO: Introduction to Annotations

Introduction to Annotations

This documentation chapter is for editors and encoders working on annotation files. It will guide you through the tasks that you must complete while encoding the annotations for your edition.

Rationale

Annotations are a form of critical paratext. Their purpose, length, and type will depend on the scholarly objectives and intended readership of your anthology and as well as the particular aims of your edition. In general, however, annotations serve the following purposes:

They offer information necessary for the intended reader to understand the text. For example, a student reader needs translations of non-English passages and explanatory glosses. An anthology aimed at scholars will not need to provide such glosses.

They work in tandem with the collations to offer more information about textual variants and cruces. They offer justifications for the editor’s emendations.

They point out intertextual connections, offer longer paraphrases than a gloss can offer, and identify critically controversial or ambiguous passages, citing other primary texts and secondary sources that will help the reader. The goal of such annotations is not to display the editor’s erudition or lock down a single interpretation, but rather to help the intended readership and support the scholarly objectives of the edition within the anthology. They may constitute original scholarship in their own right and may be cited by readers, critics, and future editors.

Collaborative Annotation

Annotations for an edition can be written synchronously by one or more editors, or asynchronously by a later annotator. Annotations can bear a


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in order to give credit to multiple contributors. Pedagogical and performance annotations lends themselves particularly well to asynchronous collaboration.

Anthology-Level Decisions

LEMDO supports various editorial approaches and ways of working. Consult with your anthology lead to find out which types of annotations are required for your edition, how verbose or terse your annotations should be, and how much you should be linking to other texts and resources.

Learning Outcomes

The annotations documentation is designed to support you through encoding all of the annotations for your edition. By the time you have worked through this chapter, you will:

Be familiar with the types of annotations that LEMDO supports.

Be able to write and encode your annotations according to LEMDO’s standard practices.

Know how to link your annotations to your modernized text.

Section	Description
Encode File Categories for Annotation Files	Learn about the file categories LEMDO uses for annotation files
Types of Annotations	Learn about the types of notes that you may add to your annotation file
Write Annotations	Learn the basics of LEMDO’s annotations practice
Encode Annotations	Learn how to encode your annotations

Prosopography

Abby Flight

Remediator and encoder, 2024–present. Abby Flight completed her BA in English at the University of Victoria in 2024, and is now an MA student focusing on Medieval and Early Modern Studies.

Janelle Jenstad

Janelle Jenstad is a Professor of English at the University of Victoria, Director of The Map of Early Modern London, and Director of Linked Early Modern Drama Online. With Jennifer Roberts-Smith and Mark Beatrice Kaethler, she co-edited Shakespeare’s Language in Digital Media: Old Words, New Tools (Routledge). She has edited John Stow’s A Survey of London (1598 text) for MoEML and is currently editing The Merchant of Venice (with Stephen Wittek) and Heywood’s 2 If You Know Not Me You Know Nobody for DRE. Her articles have appeared in Digital Humanities Quarterly, Elizabethan Theatre, Early Modern Literary Studies, Shakespeare Bulletin, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies. She contributed chapters to Approaches to Teaching Othello (MLA); Teaching Early Modern Literature from the Archives (MLA); Institutional Culture in Early Modern England (Brill); Shakespeare, Language, and the Stage (Arden); Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate); New Directions in the Geohumanities (Routledge); Early Modern Studies and the Digital Turn (Iter); Placing Names: Enriching and Integrating Gazetteers (Indiana); Making Things and Drawing Boundaries (Minnesota); Rethinking Shakespeare Source Study: Audiences, Authors, and Digital Technologies (Routledge); and Civic Performance: Pageantry and Entertainments in Early Modern London (Routledge). For more details, see janellejenstad.com.

Joey Takeda

Joey Takeda is LEMDO’s Consulting Programmer and Designer, a role he assumed in 2020 after three years as the Lead Developer on LEMDO.

Mahayla Galliford

Project manager, 2025-present; research assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated with a BA (Hons with distinction) from the University of Victoria in 2024. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Mahayla continues her studies through UVic’s English MA program and her SSHRC-funded thesis project focuses on editing and encoding girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s dramatic entertainments, in collaboration with LEMDO.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVic’s Humanities Computing and Media Centre for over two decades, and has been involved with dozens of Digital Humanities projects. He has served on the TEI Technical Council and as Managing Editor of the Journal of the TEI. He took over from Joey Takeda as lead developer on LEMDO in 2020. He is a collaborator on the SSHRC Partnership Grant led by Janelle Jenstad.

Navarra Houldin

Training and Documentation Lead 2025–present. LEMDO project manager 2022–2025. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA with a major in history and minor in Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America. They are continuing their education through an MA program in Gender and Social Justice Studies at the University of Alberta where they will specialize in Digital Humanities.

Tracey El Hajj

Junior Programmer 2019–2020. Research Associate 2020–2021. Tracey received her PhD from the Department of English at the University of Victoria in the field of Science and Technology Studies. Her research focuses on the algorhythmics of networked communications. She was a 2019–2020 President’s Fellow in Research-Enriched Teaching at UVic, where she taught an advanced course on Artificial Intelligence and Everyday Life. Tracey was also a member of the Map of Early Modern London team, between 2018 and 2021. Between 2020 and 2021, she was a fellow in residence at the Praxis Studio for Comparative Media Studies, where she investigated the relationships between artificial intelligence, creativity, health, and justice. As of July 2021, Tracey has moved into the alt-ac world for a term position, while also teaching in the English Department at the University of Victoria.

Orgography

LEMDO Team (LEMD1)

The LEMDO Team is based at the University of Victoria and normally comprises the project director, the lead developer, project manager, junior developers(s), remediators, encoders, and remediating editors.

Metadata

Authority title	Introduction to Annotations
Type of text	Documentation
Publisher	University of Victoria on the Linked Early Modern Drama Online Platform
Series	Linked Early Modern Drama Online
Source	TEI Customization created by Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Janelle Jenstad; documentation written by members of the LEMDO Team
Editorial declaration	n/a
Edition	Released with Linked Early Modern Drama Online 1.0
Encoding description	Encoded in TEI P5 according to the LEMDO Customization and Encoding Guidelines
Document status	prgGenerated
Funder(s)	Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
License/availability	This file is licensed under a CC BY-NC_ND 4.0 license, which means that it is freely downloadable without permission under the following conditions: (1) credit must be given to the author and LEMDO in any subsequent use of the files and/or data; (2) the content cannot be adapted or repurposed (except in quotations for the purposes of academic review and citation); and (3) commercial uses are not permitted without the knowledge and consent of the editor and LEMDO. This license allows for pedagogical use of the documentation in the classroom.