LEMDO: Encode Intended Audience for Documentation

Encode Intended Audience for Documentation

Rationale

Our documentation targets a number of different but intersecting user groups. To help users filter the documentation and find the pages that are most relevant to them, we have a created an taxonomy of audiences that corresponds to our Quickstarts:

@xml:id	Name	Description
audRemediator	Remediator	An encoder who has the responsibility of converting IML-encoded or TCP texts to the LEMDO TEI P5 customization.
audEncoder	Encoder	Anyone who is encoding texts in the LEMDO TEI P5 customization.
audEditor	Editor	Anyone who is editing a play or related works for publication in a LEMDO anthology.
audAnthologyLead	Anthology Lead	Anyone who is responsible for a group of editors who are editing plays or related works for publication in a LEMDO-generated anthology (e.g., the leads of MoMS, QME, DRE, NISE).
audDeveloper	Developer	Anyone who is responsible for maintaining the repository, writing processing, running builds, or customizing a CSS file for an anthology. Normally, developers are based at UVic and work in the lemdo/code section of the repository. Anthology leads may hire a developer/designer to customize a CSS file for an anthology.
audRepoUser	Repository User	Anyone who commits work to the LEMDO repository, including editors and RAs who have write privileges on an edition portfolio.
audDocumenter	Documenter	Anyone who writes project documentation.

Principles

These principles work in tandem with the principles for organizing documentation in general and structuring individual documentation files.

Write Documentation for an Audience

Think about the audience for whom a piece of documentation is intended. In general, no single documentation page should be intended for more than two audiences.

Inheritance

The root div of a documentation will bear all the audience types for which the file is intended (e.g., editors and encoders).

Child divs of the root (i.e., the second level of the XML tree of the document) may bear one of the values listed on the root div.

Do not add audience types to third-level divs. If you find yourself nesting a div that is pitched at a different audience, you probably want to place that div somewhere else in the documentation where the intended audience will see it.

Self-identification

We know that remediators are necessarily encoders, and that editors are also encoders if they are encoding their own work, and that anthology leads are often also editors (and therefore often also encoders). Instead of trying to imagine all of the roles that one person might inhabit, let the individual identify their own role at any given point.

Our Quickstart documents are designed to address roles rather than individuals. They point users to other Quickstart documents that are likely going to be relevant to them as they move through various roles.

Encoding Practice

We use the


                                       @ana

attribute on the root


                                          <div>

element. The value of


                                       @ana

is one of the values in the audiences taxonomy. The


                                       @ana

with a value pointing to an audience type is required on the root


                                          <div>

Multiple values of


                                       @ana

are space-separated.

Optionally, we add the


                                       @ana

attribute to child


                                          <div>

elements of the root


                                          <div>

The


                                       @ana

attribute is not allowed on grandchildren


                                          <div>

elements of the root.

Examples

In the following example, the intended audiences for the document are Encoders and Editors. The


                                       @ana

goes on the root


                                          <div>

element. (Note that our example omits the


                                       @xmlns

attribute that we normally have on the root


                                          <div>

in documentation files.)

<div xml:id="learn_HAND1" resp="or:odd_JENS1_wtm or:odd_VATC1_wtm" ana="audEncoder audEditor draft">
<head>Title of Page</head>
<p></p>
</div>

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.

Nicole Vatcher

Technical Documentation Writer, 2020–2022. Nicole Vatcher completed her BA (Hons.) in English at the University of Victoria in 2021. Her primary research focus was women’s writing in the modernist period.

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	Encode Intended Audience for Documentation
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.