Create Templates for Editors

One of the most useful forms of documentation is the XML template. These are files containing the basic encoding structure for the target document along with extensive XML comments offering instructions, advice, and links to documentation. Editors and RAs can open a template from the Oxygen File menu and follow the instructions therein.

Practice: Organize and Name Template Files

All of our LEMDO templates are saved in the data/templates folder. We use file names to organize the templates and to make it easy for encoders to find the template that they need to use.
As of 2026, we have decided to create a template file for each edition component for each LEMDO anthology. This decision allows us to provide the appropriate metadata in our templates, thus reducing our workload before an anthology release. However, the template file structure necessitates very clear file naming practices to ensure our templates are organized.
When you create a template file, follow this file naming practice:
Begin the file name with the anthology that it is relevant to followed by an underscore (e.g., dre_).
Add the edition component that it is a template for followed by an underscore (e.g., annotations_).
Add the word “template” at the end of the file name followed by the file extension .xml.
For example, the template for annotation files in DRE editions should be named dre_annotations_template.xml.
By following this naming practice, we ensure that all of the templates for a single anthology are grouped together in the templates folder.

Practice: Create a New Template File

To make a new template, you must first create a new file:
Right-click on the templates folder in Oxygen’s project pane.
Hover your mouse over the “New” option.
Select “File…”
Select any LEMDO template (it does not matter which one as you will be removing all of the content).
In the file name text box, give the new file a meaningful name following the practice described above.
Click the “Create” button.
Make the file valid.
Add the file to the LEMDO repository following the instructions in Practice: Add Files to the Repository.

Practice: Add Metadata to Your Template File

Having template files for each anthology allows us to customize the metadata in our templates to match the anthology’s metadata needs and decisions. Adding anthology-specific metadata is typically the first task when adding content to a new template file.
To add metadata to a template file, first check if the anthology has a metadata template file in the LEMDO Google Drive. If you do not have access to the LEMDO Google Drive, ask either Janelle Jenstad or the LEMDO project manager to check.
If the anthology does have an existing metadata template, migrate the contents for the relevant edition component into your template file. Use caution when moving the contents over—copy-and-pasting from Google Docs can inadvertently introduce unwanted characters to your XML file.
If the anthology does not have an existing metadata template, use the contents from the generic LEMDO metdata template, also saved in the LEMDO Google Drive. Consult with Janelle Jenstad and the appropriate anthology lead(s) to update the metadata to match the anthology’s metadata needs.

Practice: Add Content to Your Template File

The simplest way to add content to the <text> element in your template file is to copy-and-paste from a complete, valid file of the type for which you are making a template. For example, if you are making a template for annotations, you may copy the text from the annotations of a published edition. Once you have copied the text over, remove most of the content. Retain only what is required to give a good example of desired encoding and to make the file valid.
If you are making a template for a file type that we do not yet have a completed sample of, you may need to work with LEMDO’s developers to ensure that your template file is fully valid and meets the needs of the new file type.

Practice: Provide Guidance to Editors/RAs

Furnish the template with guidance and instructions in the form of XML comments. Here are some tips:
Be generous and clear.
Give examples as often as possible.
Give the URIs of relevant documentation divisions, pages, or chapters.
Indicate clearly when the user of the template needs to change the information in the text node of an element, or the value of an attribute. For example, the template file has an xml:id matching the file name. The user of the template will need to change that xml:id to match the name of the new file that is being created with the use of this template.
Get a LEMDO team member to test your template. Use their feedback to improve the guidance. Proofread the template carefully. Any errors we make in the template will proliferate through the site as users create files from the template.

Tips for Writing Template Files

For the template file to be valid, we need to give xml:ids (e.g., to div elements in templates, on the root element, etc). However, we cannot use an xml:id that already appears elsewhere in the site. Reuse of an extant xml:id (even just to offer an example) will break the build. Until a developer offers a different solution, we suggest creating IDs with ABBR in lieu of the play ID: e.g., "emdABBR_M_annotation".
We recommend consulting with existing templates when adding comments with guidance for encoders. You can often modify comments from other template files and add them to your new file. For example, we want to have a guidance comment explaining how to name files in each of our templates. You can modify and re-use the same comment about naming files in all new template files.

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 Create Templates for Editors
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.