General Documentation Structure

Rationale

LEMDO’s documentation is intended to guide a variety of audiences through the process of encoding a LEMDO edition and publishing an anthology with LEMDO. For many of our readers, their LEMDO edition is their first foray into TEI, encoding, and the digital humanities. With new encoders in mind, we need to ensure that the information provided in our Encoding Guidelines is accessible, accurate, and clear. The first step in making the Encoding Guidelines meet those requirements is to ensure user-friendly and intuitive navigation that breaks information into managable chunks and makes it simple to find any necessary information.
This documentation page will introduce you to the principles that we follow when structuring our documentation and will describe the current structure of the LEMDO documentation index.

Principles for Structuring Documentation

LEMDO follows specific principles for determining when to make new documentation pages and deciding where documentation pages should be placed in the documentation index:
Web pages should be short and relevant.
Provide foundational information before complex information.
Information that is relevant to a large audience comes before information that is relevant to only a small audience.
When related information is split between two pages, link those pages.
Do not deeply nest sections of documentation ( <div> elements).
When we follow these principles, readers are able to learn and understand fundamental concepts before reading Web pages with information that requires those fundamental concepts. They also are more likely to read through a full documentation page because the pages are manageable sizes.

Practice: Determine When to Create a New Documentation Page

Generally, it is better to have many short inter-linked pages than a few very long documentation pages. However, there are many cases where closely-related information should be in a single page. When you need to determine if you should create a single new documentation page, create multiple new documentation pages, or add to an existing documentation page, follow these guidelines:
If the content is not replicating obsolete information (i.e., this is entirely new information), create a new documentation page.
If the content is replacing obsolete information (e.g., we have new encoding practice and you need to rewrite existing documentation that is no longer accurate), replace the old information in the existing file. Do not create a new documentation page.
If the content explains two encoding options, keep both options in a single file. You may simply introduce both along with a decision process in one file and create additional files explaining the practice of encoding each option. In those cases, ensure that you link to the encoding practice files from the further reading section of the introductory file.
If a page is overly long and there is a logical division (or multiple logical divisions), divide the file. Link between them in their further reading and prior reading sections.
If you are adding short supplementary information, add it to an existing file. Do not create a new documentation page.
When you create new documentation pages, it is important to create links to other relevant pages. This process of pointing to related files allows us to keep our documentation pages concise while supporting readers to find the information that they need. For information about the practice of linking between documentation pages, see Make Links to and from Documentation.

Decision Tree

The following decision tree graphically lays out the scenarios for deciding when to create a single new documentation page, create multiple new documentation pages, or add to an existing documentation page.
Flowchart lays out the scenarios for deciding when to create a single new documentation page, create multiple new documentation pages, or add to an existing documentation page.

Documentation in the LEMDO Repository

The documentation folder in the LEMDO repository consists of discrete files, each of which has a file name beginning with learn_. Each file is meant to function as a discrete section of documentation, with links to other sections or subsections (i.e., <div> elements within those files) as necessary. Each file is rooted on a <div> element and ought to contain an independently understandable section of a chapter (as much as anything is independently understandable). See Structure of a Single Documentation File for more information on how single files are structured.

Structure of the Online Documentation Index

We process our documentation at rendering time into chapters. We have grouped these chapters into chunks so that related chapters are near each other. We have ordered the chapters to reflect the workflow of a new editor or encoder following the practice outlined in the DRE Editorial Guidelines. The following paragraphs explain the order of the chunks of documentation as of July 2026.
Documentation to get started with LEMDO: The documentation in these chapters are the starting point for any new LEMDO contributor. They explain how to use LEMDO documentation, how to get set up in the repo, and the basic workflow based on the contributor’s specific role.
Core features of the LEMDO platform:
Making Links (Chapter 5)
The documentation in these chapters provide information that all of LEMDO contributors should have some base knowledge as well as the shared resources and practices that are essential to LEMDO’s function.
Style and encoding guidelines: The documentation in these chapters outline the basic expectations that LEMDO has for style and valid encoding. This documentation also explains the tools and practices that LEMDO implements to ensure readers follow our encoding guidelines.
Citation: The documentation in these chapters explains how to give credit where it is due by adding to our shared bibliography (BIBL1), curating an edition bibliography, and using semantic tagging for quotation marks.
Documentation related to semi-diplomatic transcriptions: The documentation in these chapters provide instructions on each step of preparing and encoding a semi-diplomatic transcription. Information that is relevant to all encoders of semi-diplomatic transcriptions are given in earlier chapters (Facsimiles and Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions) while information that is needed by only some encoders is given in subsequent chapters (Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Print Playbooks and Semi-Diplomatic Transcriptions: Features Unique to Manuscript Playbooks). Documentation on how to prepare a semi-diplomatic transcription is the first of the chunks related to preparing a specific edition component because semi-diplomatic transcriptions are the recommended first stage in preparing a LEMDO edition.
Collation:
Collation (Chapter 15)
The documentation in this chapter guides editors and encoders through the process of encoding a collation file.
Emendation and Modernization:
Modernized Texts (Chapter 16)
The documentation in this chapter provides all of the information needed to encode a modernized text.
Contextualization:
Annotations (Chapter 17)
Critical Paratexts (Chapter 18)
Media (Chapter 19)
The documentation in these chapters provide practice for adding context to a modernized text in the form of annotations and critical paratexts.
Finishing an edition:
Metadata (Chapter 20)
The documentation in these chapters explains to editors the final steps of preparing their edition for publication. The documentation introduces LEMDO’s practices for updating metadata and the relationship between anthology and edition that allows for our handshake model of inclusion.
Preparing and publishing an anthology:
Anthology Release (Chapter 23)
The documentation in these chapters guides anthology leads through the process of creating, customizing, and publishing an anthology with LEMDO.
Documentation for specialized roles: The documentation in these chapters is for readers with specific roles in the LEMDO project. The anthology development chapter is for anthology leads and developers customizing anthologies, while the LEMDO development chapter documents the processing for the LEMDO project. The documentation chapter provides the style guide and encoding practices that LEMDO documenters follow. The conversion and remediation chapter documents the work that has been done in the process of remediating IML editions to LEMDO’s TEI.
Appendices:
Elements (Appendix 1)
Attributes (Appendix 2)
Supplementary Texts (Appendix 3)
Legacy Markup (Appendix 4)
The documentation in these appendices is used by a small number of readers. It guides people to TEI specs for elements and attributes and describes encoding practices that are not typically desirable in LEMDO editions that may still be used by editors working on legacy editions coming from the ISE platform.
Note that chapter numbers are defined only in the ODD file. Chapter numbers are not part of the XML files that constitute chapter introductions and sections, which makes it simple to move sections and reorder chapters if it seems beneficial to do so.

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.

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 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; 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.

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.

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 General Documentation Structure
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.