LEMDO: Introduction to Metadata

Introduction to Metadata

The documentation in this chapter is for all editors, encoders, remediators, and anthology leads. It will introduce you to the basic format of metadata for all LEMDO files and will guide you through the practice of encoding each section of metadata in your files. Note that each anthology will have metadata templates for each type of file included in their anthology that gives the specific wording for their metadata. Those templates accompany the generalized explanations in this documentation.

What is Metadata?

Metadata is data about your data or object. In a printed book, you will find the metadata on the Cataloguing in Publishing page that follows the title page. Such a page usually includes copyright information, author and publisher details, date of publication, and suggested cataloguing subjects and numbers.

In the LEMDO environment, your data consists of the various pages that make up your edition. Every page has a header that captures the following information about the page:

Title

Contributors

Rationale

Metadata in a LEMDO file serves a number of purposes:

It gives credit where credit is due—to the authors, editors, remediators and encoders, research assistants, peer reviewers or those who arrange for peer review, funders, publishers, and any other contributors to the making of the file.

It licenses the file for reuse in other contexts and prescribes the terms of use.

It contains information that our processing needs in order to render the file appropriately.

It describes the source on which the text contained in the file is based.

It captures important information about how the text in the file has been prepared and the decisions the editor of the file has made.

It indicates the categories to which the file belongs in LEMDO’s classification scheme.

It may capture metadata from a previous version of the file, such as the ISE or TCP metadata.

It keeps a record of the number and types of revisions that have been made to the file.

It indicates whether or not a file is ready to be published, and it indicates in which anthologies it can be included.

Depending on the type of file, it may also contain other information: editorial character lists in the case of modernized texts; descriptions of manuscripts and the hands therein in the case of manuscript; or descriptions of layout and typography in the case of semi-diplomatic transcriptions.

When to Add Metadata

Now: You will want to pay attention to metadata from the very beginning of your encoding process. If you are using one of LEMDO’s templates (see Use LEMDO’s Oxygen Templates), you will find extensive XML comments to guide you in filling out the metadata.

Ongoing: Keep track of your changes regularly. Add information about your source as it comes to light. Capture your editorial decisions when you make them.

Before a Release: Some metadata needs to be added or updated just before a release, such as the


                                          <editionStmt>

indicating the release in which the file is being published. Generally, anthology leads and LEMDO RAs will take care of adding last-minute metadata and ensuring consistency in metadata wording across the anthology.

Learning Outcomes

This chapter is designed to help you better understand and encode the metadata for your edition. By the time you have worked through this chapter, you will:

Be familiar with key metadata elements

Know what pieces of metadata you should update at what point

Be able to update your metadata

Section	Description
Metadata Basics	Learn about key elements that make up your metadata
Complete LEMDO Metadata Model: Elements Only	See a complete list of elements included in a `<teiHeader>`
Encode the Title Statement in Your Metadata	Learn how to encode the title of your document
Encode Responsibility Statements	Learn how to give credit to contributors
Encode Sponsors and Funders in Your Metadata	Learn how to recognize funders in your metadata
Encode the Edition Statement and Series Statement in Your Metadata	Learn how to indicate the anthology and website version that your edition is included in
Encode the Publication Statement in Your Metadata	Learn about how we capture licensing and use information
License Your Edition and its Component Files	Learn how to encode licensing information for your file
Encode the Source Description in Your Metadata	Learn how to describe the source for your files
Encode the Profile Description in Your Metadata	Learn about the profile description, which includes the categories that your files belong to and, in the case of modernized texts, your character list
Encode the Encoding Description in Your Metadata	Learn about the standard text that goes in the encoding description for your files
Encode Metadata from External Sources	Learn about how LEMDO retains metadata from other sources
Encode the Revision Description	Learn how to track the changes that you make in your 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.

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; 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.

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	Introduction to Metadata
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.