Chapter 21. Anthology Release

Introduction to Anthology Releases

This chapter is designed for anthology leads to learn about the typical process for anthology release.

Learning Outcomes

The Anthology Release documentation is designed to support you as you get close to releasing your anthology. By the time you have worked through this chapter, you will:
Be familiar with the standard release process.
Know that release size will impact the timeline for release.
Know your responsibilities and tasks as well as those of the LEMDO team during the release process.

Vocabulary

We use the term freeze frequently in our Anthology Release documentation. Freeze is a period before an anthology release during which no new content should be added to the files that you will publish and no major revisions should be made. During this period, your anthology team will ensure that all pages are ready to be published. We will likely refer to your anthology being frozen during this period. This simply means that your anthology is in the state described above: there is no new content being added to it and there are no major revisions being made.

Release Step-by-Step

The following are the steps that must be completed before an anthology can be released, given in the order that they should be completed in and including the people responsible for each step:
Determine which files will be published in the release. (Anthology leads.)
Finish adding content to and encoding the files that will be published. (Anthology leads, editors, and encoders.)
Create a pre-freeze progress chart. (Anthology leads with support from the LEMDO team.)
Plan the timeline for freezing your anthology. (Anthology leads with support from the LEMDO team.)
Communicate your timeline with the LEMDO team and your anthology. (Anthology leads.)
Complete pre-freeze tasks. (Anthology leads, editors, and encoders.)
Inform the LEMDO director that you are ready to freeze your anthology. (Anthology leads.)
LEMDO announces the freeze. There should be no new content added or major revisions from this point on. (LEMDO team.)
Create a release progress chart. (Anthology leads with support from the LEMDO team.)
Complete pre-release tasks. (Anthology leads, editors, encoders, and the LEMDO team.)
LEMDO publishes the release. (LEMDO team.)
These steps will be further broken down in this chapter of documentation.

Content

Section Description
Release Process and Timelines Learn about the timelines for anthology release and see a general overview for the process
Before an Anthology Freeze Learn about the tasks that anthology leads, editors, and encoders must complete during the pre-freeze phase of release
Check Anthology Status Learn how to check the diagnostics and status for your anthology
Freeze Learn about the tasks that anthology leads and encoders must complete during the freeze phase of release
Publish and Evaluate Your Anthology Release Learn about the publication and evaluation of an anthology release

Release Process and Timelines

This page is designed for Anthology Leads (the Coordinating Editors of the NISE, DRE, or MoMS anthologies; the General Editors of the QME, EMEE, DRD, EMDP, and Douai anthologies).

Rationale

Having a clear understanding of the release process and reasonable expectations for the amount of time that each step of the process takes can make the release process go more smoothly and run on schedule. This documentation is designed to give you an overview of the anticipated process and timeline for an anthology release based on the LEMDO team’s publication experiences. We recommend consulting it as you plan your anthology’s release.
Note that the size of your release will impact the amount of time that the run-up to release takes; a smaller release will take less time than a larger release. You must notify the LEMDO team at least three calendar months ahead of your desired release date for a small release (e.g., you are releasing one edition or two editions). The feasibility of your release will depend on other tasks in the LEMDO team’s workflow. The precise release date and time will depend on our developers’ availability.

Practice: Determine Files to be Published

Before you can plan what needs to be done to ensure that your files are ready to be published, determine which files and editions you will include in your release. These should be files and editions that are already completely written and encoded. You should be in communication with your editors so that you can anticipate when they will be finished work on their editions.
LEMDO recommends doing small releases, especially for your anthology’s first release. By publishing only a few editions at a time, you will reduce the amount of work that your anthology needs to do and the amount of time that it takes to complete that work during the release process. You may even decide to only publish your anthology about pages in your first release so that both your first and subsequent releases are made smaller and easier.
Your anthology will include only the editions that you select to be published by including them in your anthology’s TEI Corpus file (the file in your anthology directory with an @xml:id value identical to your anthology ID; e.g., moms.xml). Only files that have a value of published on the @status attribute of their <revisionDesc> can be published.
Once you have determined the files that you want to publish, let the LEMDO team know that you would like to prepare for a website release. Let us know at least three months in advance of when you would like to publish for a small release. For bigger releases, touch base with the LEMDO team up to a year in advance.

Practice: Pre-Release

Before You Contact LEMDO About Publishing

Determine which files you are going to publish in your upcoming release. Remember that the fewer files you publish, the sooner you will be able to release.
Finalize content in the files you are going to publish: enter revisions arising from the peer-review process, check citations and references, and ensure that you have made all the links you want to make.
Call for updated bios from contributors, if necessary.

Minimum Three Months Ahead of Release Date

Notify the LEMDO team of your desired release date and which editions you intend to include.
Create a pre-freeze progress chart that lists all the files you are publishing or updating in this release. Having this chart will help you to determine a timeline for your freeze and ensure that you do not miss any required tasks. People often notice errors and omissions during this stage; anticipate that it will take a full month to complete your pre-freeze tasks. For more information on pre-freeze tasks (including creating a pre-freeze progress chart), see Before an Anthology Freeze.
Proofread pages.
Standardize metadata across all pages.
Write release notes.
Let the LEMDO Director know when you are close to being ready to freeze your anthology. The LEMDO team can then support you to plan a timeline for the freeze. It is important that your team knows when the freeze will be and what it entails to ensure that they understand that they can add no new content during the freeze and that they complete their pre-freeze tasks on time. For more information on freezes, see Freeze.

One Week Ahead of Release: Freeze Tasks

When you are nearly finished with your pre-freeze tasks, you create a final release progress chart. Share it with your team after you have completed all of your pre-freeze tasks. These tasks include:
Check the metadata for each Web page.
Proofread to correct any glaring errors.
Click every link on each Web page.
Change the status of each page to published.
For more information about the tasks to be done during the freeze and on creating your final release progress chart, see Freeze.
The LEMDO director will announce the freeze when you have finished your pre-freeze tasks. There should be no new content added or major revisions made from this point on.
This stage typically takes about a week. We prefer to publish early in the week (on Mondays when possible) to ensure that we are able to give the release our full and unrushed attention. To allow your team a full week for the freeze period, plan to freeze your anthology at the end of a work week and to complete your final release tasks at the end of the following week.

One Day Ahead of Release

The LEMDO team will take over once you have completed your final release tasks during the freeze. We will do a final check to ensure that your anthology is ready to be published, then we will publish your beta site.
There are sometimes final corrections to be made in this stage. You can anticipate that it will take about a day to release your site. We prefer to publish early in the week; please plan to be done your final release tasks by Monday morning of the week that you wish to publish your anthology.

Practice: Evaluate Your Release

(One month)
LEMDO will do a release evaluation and report after your anthology has been published. Your role in this stage of the release process is to respond to release questionnaires that the LEMDO Project Manager emails you. The Project Manager will incorporate all team members’ questionnaire responses into the our release report. All questionnaire responses will be anonymous. This in turn allows us to evaluate what went well during the release process, and what we can improve on in future releases. The LEMDO Project Manager will send you the final release report when it is complete.
Anticipate that it will take about one month for you to receive the release report after your anthology has been released. For more information about the publication and evaluation of your anthology, see Publish and Evaluate Your Anthology Release.

Before an Anthology Freeze

Rationale

There are a number of tasks that must be completed before your anthology can be released. We have grouped the tasks into two main groups: tasks that should be completed before your anthology freeze and tasks that must be completed during your anthology freeze. This documentation explains the tasks that should be done before your anthology is frozen (i.e., before the point when your anthology leads and the LEMDO team determine that there should be no new content or major revisions made to any files in your anthology).

Create a Pre-Freeze Progress Chart

For Anthology Leads: Once you have determined which files will be published with this release, work with the LEMDO Project Manager to create a progress chart to ensure that all of the required tasks are completed before your anthology is released. Email the LEMDO Project Manager at lemdo@uvic.ca.
You are responsible for adding any outstanding encoding tasks to the pre-freeze progress chart. Use your anthology status report to check for major encoding errors that you must correct. We also recommend looking at each file that you are planning to publish to check for comments and obvious encoding errors.
You are also responsible for adding your anthology’s desired metadata format to the bottom of the pre-freeze progress chart file. For more information on encoding metadata, see Chapter 18. Metadata.

Finish Encoding Files

All outstanding encoding tasks must be completed and comments in files should be resolved before your anthology is frozen. Additionally, all anthology diagnostics for the files that you wish to publish should be cleared during this phase. Follow the instructions in your anthology’s pre-freeze progress chart to complete the encoding tasks assigned to you.

Copyedit Pages

Complete all remaining copyediting. Remember that this is the last time that you should be making any significant revisions to the content of any files—the freeze period is for correcting only glaring errors. We recommend proofreading each file on your anthology’s alpha site while having the XML files open to make any necessary corrections.
When copyediting your anthology bibliography and edition bibliographies, check that entries are correctly ordered and follow LEMDO’s practice for formatting bibliographies. See Chapter 8. Bibliography and Citation Guidelines for more information.

Check All Metadata

We recommend checking the metadata for each of your files using both of the following methods:
Check metadata in your XML files.
Check the rendering of metadata on your anthology’s alpha site.
Your anthology lead should have added your anthology’s desired metadata format to the bottom of your pre-freeze progress chart file. Ensure that the encoding and content match that format for each file.

Check Anthology Status

Our continuous integration server (Jenkins) generates a new publication status report for each anthology. It regenerates these reports with every successful Jenkins build.
The checks built into our system ensure that your anthology includes only published editions licensed for your anthology, and only the components of those editions that are published and licensed. Jenkins first checks the status of the file that drives your entire anthology (dre.xml, ise.xml, qme.xml, etc). Jenkins then checks all the editions that are listed in that file for inclusion in your anthology. It checks the edition page for each edition, and then checks all the files that are listed in that edition page. The point is to have a cascading series of checks. If the edition is not included in your anthology file, then Jenkins does not check that edition (thus saving processing time).
You will see from the report that Jenkins is looking principally for three things in each file that is meant to be included in your anthology:
Does the file have @status value of published on the <revisionDesc> element in the <teiHeader> ? I.e., is the file ready to be published? The LEMDO Team decides when a file is ready to be published (included in an anthology release). Note that files can be published without peer-review, if the file does not require peer review (as might be the case with an Acknowledgements file, say) or if the anthology lead decides that there is some benefit to having the file available to the public.
Is the file licensed for the anthology? I.e., does the file have a <licence> element that points to the anthology that is being built?
Does the file have a correctly formatted edition statement ( <editionStmt> )? All files being published must have an edition statement that fits LEMDO’s standard format of Released with {anthology name} 1.0.
Tasks that need your attention before your next release are marked in red. Tasks that are done are marked in green.
You can find your anthology status page on the LEMDO-dev website under the Anthologies tab in the top navigation bar.

Freeze

Freeze is a period before an anthology release during which no new content should be added to the files that you will publish and no major revisions should be made. During this period, your anthology team will ensure that all pages are ready to be published.

Rationale

LEMDO will freeze your anthology before it is published. This period is used to ensure that there are no glaring errors in any of the pages being published, that all pages have complete metadata, and that all links on your anthology website work correctly.

Create a Final Release Progress Chart

For Anthology Leads: When you are nearing freeze, work with the LEMDO Project Manager to create a progress chart to ensure that all of the required tasks are completed before your anthology is released. Email the LEMDO Project Manager at lemdo@uvic.ca.

Look Through the On This Page Hamburger Menu

Each page on your anthology site has an On This Page hamburger menu accessible by clicking the button with three horizontal lines in the top left corner of the page. Click through each of the buttons in that menu (Content, Credits, Tools, and About). If there are links in any of those, click each of the links to ensure that they work.

Check Metadata

Navigate to the About tab in your page’s On This Page hamburger menu and select Metadata. Ensure that there is data in each of the metadata fields. If there are any empty fields in your page’s metadata, go to the bottom of your anthology’s pre-freeze progress chart file to find the correct format for metadata and add the appropriate information to your page’s XML file.

Proofread and Change Status

When you proofread your pages, check for glaring errors (missing spaces, missing or extra punctuation, spelling errors). Avoid making any major revisions to content at this point; all major revisions should be made well before the freeze.
To change your file’s @status value, follow these steps:
Change the value on the @status attribute on the <revisionDesc> element to TEI_proofed or IML-TEI_proofed.
Add a new <change> element to the <revisionDesc> .
Add a @who attribute with the value pers: followed by your xml:id.
Add a @when attribute with the date that have proofed the page.
Add a @status attribute with the value TEI_proofed or IML-TEI_proofed.
By changing the status of your file to TEI_proofed or IML-TEI_proofed, you are indicating that the page is ready for your publisher (LEMDO) to publish the page. Note that these changes should be completed at least one full day before your anthology is published.

Publish

The final step before we release your site is undertaken by the LEMDO Team. The LEMDO Team will do a final check of your anthology and all the pages you want to publish in the next release. You should plan to have completed all of your final release tasks at least one full day before your anthology is published. That gives the anthology time to build and be checked on the day of publication.
Then LEMDO Team will do the following:
Change the value on the @status attribute on the <revisionDesc> element of each file to published.
Add a @who attribute with a value of org:LEMD1 to indicate that it is LEMDO that is publishing the file.
Add a @when attribute. The value of @when will be the date that we are publishing your anthology.
Add a @status attribute with the value published.
If there is an earlier <change> element with a @status value of published, we will remove the @status but retain the rest of the <change> element. We will note the initial date of publication in the text node of that <change> element if the file has been previously published.
We want only one <change> element with @status value of published. The objectives here are:
To have a single, citable publication date on the page in the release.
To retain a history of the page throughout the multiple releases of your anthology.

Publish and Evaluate Your Anthology Release

Rationale

The final two stages of your anthology’s release (publication and evaluation) are done by the LEMDO team. This documentation is designed to help you understand this part of the process and know what to expect during these stages of your anthology’s release.

Anthology Publication

Once you have completed all of your final release tasks (see Freeze), the LEMDO team will check to ensure that your anthology is completely ready for publication. Our programmer will then release a static version of your anthology on your anthology’s beta website. This means that the content of your anthology’s beta site will not change until your anthology’s next release. Releasing in this way follows the Endings Principles for Release Management.

Release Evaluation

Following an anthology release, the LEMDO Project Manager will create a report evaluating the release. This report will inform how LEMDO continues to improve our process for future releases. Your role in the evaluation process is to respond to the anonymous questionnaire that the Project Manager will send to those who worked on the release.
Our release evaluation reports include the following information:
A brief summary of the release.
The aims of the release, divided into the anthology’s aims and LEMDO’s aims.
A list of activities performed by the anthology and LEMDO teams that resulted in the release.
A list of quantitative outputs (e.g., the number of editions published, the number of Web pages published, etc.)
A list of qualitative outputs compiled from the responses to the questionnaire sent out by the Project Manager. Responses will be anonymous in this report.
A table comparing the aims and outputs of the release.
Any further remarks about the release.
The Project Manager will share the release evaluation report with anthology leads when it is complete, typically 4–6 weeks after the release.

Prosopography

Isabella Seales

Isabella Seales is a fourth year undergraduate completing her Bachelor of Arts in English at the University of Victoria. She has a special interest in Renaissance and Metaphysical Literature. She is assisting Dr. Jenstad with the MoEML Mayoral Shows anthology as part of the Undergraduate Student Research Award program.

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 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.

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Authority title Chapter 21. Anthology Release
Type of text Documentation
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