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, <div> s, pages, and chapters. Editors and RAs can open a template from the Oxygen File menu and follow the instructions therein.

Make a Template

Templates are saved in lemdo/data/templates. The easiest way to make a template is to take a complete, valid file of the type for which you want to make a template. Give the file a meaningful name ending in _template.xml (e.g., annotations_template.xml). Remove most of the content of the original file, retaining only what is required to make the file validate and/or serves as a useful example. Generally, it is best to use published files as the basis for the template because the material has already been peer-reviewed and published as an open-access resource. If you want to take examples from an unpublished file, you must ask the editor(s) and the anthology lead(s) for permission.
If you are making a template for a document type for which we do not yet have any examples, you will probably need to create a valid sample file first. Test it rigorously and consult with the project developers to ensure that we have processing in place for your encoding.

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 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.

Notes

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".

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.

Martin Holmes

Martin Holmes has worked as a developer in the UVicʼs 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

Project manager 2022–present. Textual remediator 2021–present. Navarra Houldin (they/them) completed their BA in History and Spanish at the University of Victoria in 2022. During their degree, they worked as a teaching assistant with the University of Victoriaʼs Department of Hispanic and Italian Studies. Their primary research was on gender and sexuality in early modern Europe and Latin America.

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 womenʼs 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