LEMDO: The Relationship between Documentation and the ODD File

The Relationship between Documentation and the ODD File

Disambiguation

This documentation page is designed for documenters and does not explain the processing that includes documentation in the ODD file. For developers looking for documentation on code files and processing relevant to documentation, see Documentation and the ODD File.

Rationale

Unlike our XML files for editions and anthology About pages which are rooted on the


                                          <TEI>

element, our documentation files are rooted on the


                                          <div>

element. We root documentation pages on


                                          <div>

because the content from each documentation file is compiled into one page via processing instructions in the ODD file. Processing documentation in this way allows us to display all of the contents of a single documentation chapter on one HTML page on our rendered website, which some people find useful when searching for specific content in a chapter.

The Documentation Index

All of our documentation files are compiled in one place in the documentation index. Our readers see the documentation index as the the HTML documentation landing page on our rendered website. As documenters, we also get to see the documentation index in the LEMDO ODD file (data/sch/lemdo.odd).

Our documentation is the content that makes up the


                                          <body>

element of the ODD file; our schema specification lives in the


                                          <back>

element.

In the


                                          <body>

of the ODD file, each documentation chapter gets a


                                          <div>

with a unique xml:id. Each


                                          <div>

contains a


                                          <head>

element which contains the chapter number and title that appear in the rendered documentation index. The documentation pages in each chapter are added using inline processing instructions that link to the individual documentation files. Prior to the processing instructions, chapters that are not yet completed and published have a single

<p>

element that contains the following sentence:

This chapter of our documentation is still in beta. We welcome feedback, corrections, and questions while we finalize the page in our 2024–2025 work cycle.

Once each chapter is completed, a member of the LEMDO team must remove the draft paragraph from the


                                          <div>

for the chapter.

Note that the draft paragraph is not visible from the online documentation index page. It is only visible from the full chapter view that people can reach by clicking on the title for each chapter.

Processing Instructions

LEMDO’s developers have written a processing instruction to include documentation pages in our documentation index. For each documentation file that you wish to include in a documentation chapter, you must add a lemdo-include processing instruction. Doing so will add the documentation page to the next build and add a link to the documentation page from the documentation index. To add the processing instruction:

Copy this instruction into the text node of the


                                                <div>

for the chapter that you wish to add it to in the ODD file, placing it in the position in the chapter that you want it to be in: <?lemdo-include href="doc:[documentation xml:id]"?>.

Replace [documentation xml:id] with the xml:id for the documentation file that you wish to add.

For more information on the lemdo-include processing instruction, see lemdo-include.

Giving Credit in Documentation

Rooting documentation files on the


                                          <div>

element means that documentation pages are unique in the LEMDO XML ecosystem in how we give credit to those who worked on files. While in most TEI files we give credit to contributors in


                                          <respStmt>

elements in the


                                          <titleStmt>

of the


                                          <teiHeader>

, we are unable to do so in each documentation file as there is no


                                          <teiHeader>

. Instead, we list all contributors to LEMDO documentation in the


                                          <teiHeader>

of the ODD file and link to the relevant contributors’ xml:ids from the root


                                          <div>

element of each individual documentation file using the


                                       @resp

attribute.

Note that because the responsibility statements that are shown on the rendered Web pages for documentation come from the ODD file rather than the documentation file itself, the order of contributors shown online follows the order that contributors are listed in the ODD file. Despite this, we do link to the xml:ids of contributors in the order of their contributions from the root


                                          <div>

element of each documentation file (i.e., primary author of the file first, subsequent authors after). Following this practice ensures our underlying XML truthfully captures the contributions of each person to the extent possible.

For more information on our practice for giving credit in documentation files, see Give Credit for Documentation Files.

Structure of Responsibility Statements in the ODD File

Because our ODD file contains both our documentation and our schema specification, there are responsibility statements for both the entire LEMDO project and for the LEMDO Encoding Guidelines in the


                                             <teiHeader>

of the ODD file. The


                                             <respStmt>

elements giving credit for the entire project to the project director, project manager(s), and developers are listed first, followed by the


                                             <respStmt>

elements for technical writers of documentation, documentation compilers, encoders, copyeditors, and finally proofreaders. Each group is separated by an XML comment.

In the section for technical writers, the order of


                                             <respStmt>

elements (and thus the order that names are listed in on the Credits pane on rendered documentation pages) puts lead documenters and major contributors first (given in the order of Janelle Jenstad, Navarra Houldin, Mahayla Galliford, Laura Estill, Martin Holmes) followed by all of our contributing authors. Contributing authors are listed in alphabetical order by surname.

Names in all other sections are given in alphabetical order by surname.

Prosopography

Illya

Illya has a BA in English and Sociocultural Anthropology and an MA in English. Prior to joining the HCMC, he was a PhD candidate in English and Book History at the University of Toronto and worked on Records of Early English Drama and on the Modernist Archives Publishing Project. His work at the HCMC focuses on creating web-based applications for research projects led by members of the faculty of Humanities at the University of Victoria. This involves creating schemas for new and existing datasets, writing XSLT and build files to transform datasets into structured TEI and HTML formats, implementing staticSearch, and ensuring that new projects are Endings Principles compliant.

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.

Laura Estill

Laura Estill is a Canada Research Chair in Digital Humanities and Associate Professor of English at St. Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada, where she directs the digital humanities centre. Her monograph (Dramatic Extracts in Seventeenth-Century English Manuscripts: Watching, Reading, Changing Plays, 2015) and co-edited collections (Early Modern Studies after the Digital Turn, 2016 and Early British Drama in Manuscript, 2019) explore the reception history of drama by Shakespeare and his contemporaries from their initial circulation in print, manuscript, and on stage to how we mediate and understand these texts and performances online today. Her work has appeared in journals including Shakespeare Quarterly, Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, Digital Humanities Quarterly, Humanities, and The Seventeenth Century, as well as in collections such as Shakespeare’s Theatrical Documents, Shakespeare and Textual Studies, and The Shakespeare User. She is co-editor of Early Modern Digital Review.

Mahayla Galliford

Project Manager, 2025-present; Assistant Project Manager, 2024-2025; Research Assistant, 2021-present. Mahayla Galliford (she/her) graduated from the University of Victoria with a BA (honours with distinction) in 2024, and an MA English in 2026. Mahayla’s undergraduate research explored early modern stage directions and civic water pageantry. Her SSHRC-funded MA thesis project focuses on transcribing, editing, and encoding early modern girls’ manuscripts, specifically Lady Rachel Fane’s May Masque 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.

Samuel Seaberg

Samuel Seaberg, a University of Victoria English undergrad, enjoys riding his bike. During the summer of 2025, he began working with LEMDO as a recipient of the Valerie Kuehne Undergraduate Research Award (VKURA). Unfortunately, due to his summer being spent primarily in working to establish an edition of Thomas Heywood’s If You Know Not Me, You Know Nobody, Part 2 and consequently working out how to represent multi-text works in a digital space, his bike has suffered severely of sheltered seclusion from the sun. Note: Samuel now works for LEMDO as the Assistant Project Manager, much to his bike’s chagrin.

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	The Relationship between Documentation and the ODD File
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.