Encode the Title Statement in Your Metadata

Rationale

LEMDO uses the <titleStmt> element to capture the title of a file along with the contributors, funders, and sponsoring anthology for the file. This is where we give credit to the file’s author(s), editors, encoders, and copyright holders.
This documentation will guide you through the basic process of encoding your title statement and will direct you towards more specific documentation pages for each child element of <titleStmt> .

Contents of the Title Statement

While the exact wording and requirements of your title statement will depend on the piece of your edition that you are encoding, the number of contributors to the file, and if you have received funding for your edition, all title statements share the same general structure. Regardless of what type of file you are encoding, your <titleStmt> will contain the following child elements:
One <title> element: Use the <title> element to title the page that you are encoding. Each part of an edition has a different standard naming format; follow the format given in the template for your file to ensure consistency across editions. For information on encoding the <title> element, see Encode Titles.
At least four <respStmt> elements: Responsibility statements give credit to contributors to the file. You must include <respStmts> for:
Yourself as editor or author of a file depending on the part of the edition you are encoding.
The LEMDO team as an encoder of the file.
Yourself as copyright holder of the contents of the file (except in the case of semi-diplomatic transcriptions).
The University of Victoria as the copyright holder of the XML and interface.
You may include additional <respStmt> elements for other contributors to the file, including the author of the play in the case of modernized texts and semi-diplomatic transcriptions. For information on encoding the <respStmt> element, see Encode Responsibility Statements.
At least one <sponsor> element: Use the <sponsor> element to indicate the anthology (or anthologies) that commissioned your edition. For information on encoding the <sponsor> element, see Encode Sponsors and Funders in Your Metadata.
At least one <funder> element: The <funder> element acknowledges the funders for your edition. All LEMDO editions must acknowledge the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), which funds the LEMDO project. Also give credit to any additional funders that you may have. For information on encoding the <funder> element, see Encode Responsibility Statements.

Template

Your anthology will have specific templates for the metadata of each type of file. Those templates will contain the exact wording required by your anthology and the additional <respStmt> and <funder> elements that you should include. All anthologies will, however, follow this base template:
<titleStmt>
  <title type="main">Full Title</title>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:aut">Author</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:PEEE1">Your Name</persName>
    <!-- Note that you will get credit as an editor for your modernized text or as a transcriber or peer-reviewer in your semi-diplomatic transcription -->
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:edt_mrk">Encoder</resp>
    <orgName ref="org:LEMD1">LEMDO Team</orgName>
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:cph">Copyright Holder (Content)</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:PEEE1">Your Name</persName>
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:cph">Copyright Holder (XML and interface)</resp>
    <orgName ref="org:UVIC1">University of Victoria</orgName>
  </respStmt>
  <sponsor ref="org:ANTH1"/>
  <funder>
    <ref target="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/">Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada</ref>
  </funder>
</titleStmt>
Semi-diplomatic transcriptions consistently have a different set of responsibility statements for semi-diplomatic transcriptions. The base template for semi-diplomatic transcriptions is:
<titleStmt>
  <title type="main">Play Title, Quarto 1</title>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:aut">Author</resp>
    <persName ref="pros:PRRR1">Author Name</persName>
    <!-- Replace with the author of the play -->
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:trc">Transcriber</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:PEEE1">Transcriber Name</persName>
    <!-- Replace with the name of the person that did significant transcription work. Note you may have multiple respStmts for transcribers -->
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:edt_mrk">Encoder</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:PEEE1">Encoder Name</persName>
    <!-- Because one person typically does significant encoding work, they should be given credit as an individual, not as a member of the LEMDO team -->
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:edt_mrk">Batch Changes and Metadata</resp>
    <orgName ref="org:LEMD1">LEMDO Team</orgName>
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:pfr">Proofreader</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:PEEE1">Proofreader Name</persName>
    <!-- Replace with the name of the LEMDO team member that proofs the encoding -->
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:vet">Peer Reviewer</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:PEEE1">Editor Name or Other Peer Reviewer</persName>
    <!-- Replace with the editor’s name or the name of the person that checks the final semi-diplomatic transcription on the LEMDO development site -->
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:cph">Copyright Holder (Content)</resp>
    <persName ref="pers:UVIC1">University of Victoria</persName>
  </respStmt>
  <respStmt>
    <resp ref="resp:cph">Copyright Holder (XML and interface)</resp>
    <orgName ref="org:UVIC1">University of Victoria</orgName>
  </respStmt>
  <sponsor ref="org:ANTH1"/>
  <funder>
    <ref target="https://www.sshrc-crsh.gc.ca/">Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada</ref>
  </funder>
</titleStmt>

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.

PLACEHOLDER HISTORICAL PERSON

PLACEHOLDER PERSON

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.

University of Victoria (UVIC1)

https://www.uvic.ca/

Metadata