Quickstart for Encoders

This documentation is for new encoders, including editors who are encoding their own editions, research and editorial assistants helping editors to encode an edition, remediators working with the LEMDO team, and anthology leads encoding their anthology’s about pages. It will introduce you to encoding with LEMDO and the typical workflow for encoding an edition. It will also direct you towards further helpful documentation.

Introduction

All pieces of a LEMDO edition must be marked up using LEMDO’s customization of TEI-XML before it can be published online, in PDF form, and, in some cases, as part of the printed LEMDO Hornbooks series. As an encoder, your role is to mark up files following the instructions given in our documentation so that they can be processed into these publishable formats.

The Work of Encoding

You will be adding computer-readable tags to texts in order to say things about the texts. This work is called encoding, tagging, or marking up a text. LEMDO uses tags devised by the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), a widely used standard for marking up historical and literary texts. As a new encoder, you may want to return to LEMDO’s Introduction to Markup, XML, and TEI frequently for reminders of the key terminology and practices in marking up text using TEI.
All of the files you will need to encode your play are in a repository stored on a server at the University of Victoria. Anyone can look at the repository, but you need special permission to create and change files in the repository. We will give you write-permission on the directory that contains the files for the play you are encoding. For information on how to request permissions, see Workflow to Get Started with LEMDO.
Your edition directory, along with all of LEMDO’s project files and code, is stored in a Subversion (SVN) repository. This repository keeps a copy of every version of every file so that, if needed, we can retrieve a previous version of a file, directory (i.e., folder), or even the entire project. For more information about Subversion, including how LEMDO uses it, common commands you will use, and best practices for working in it, see Work in Subversion.

Workflow to Get Started with LEMDO

Before you can begin your work encoding, you must get set up to work in the LEMDO repository. You should also complete some additional training tasks. To get started working as a LEMDO encoder:
Read this page.
Email the LEMDO team to get more detailed instructions for getting started and to set up an initial training meeting. If you are an RA who is not a member of the LEMDO team (i.e., not at UVic), ask your editor to introduce you to us via email.
Apply for a UVic affiliate ID and a NetLink ID if you are not at UVic. For information on how to do so, see Get a NetLink ID.
Send us your NetLink ID. (UVic students, staff, and faculty: your NetLink ID is your UVic email handle.)
Send us a bio-bibliographical note for our list of contributors. At this point, we will create an xml:id for you and send it to you.
Familiarize yourself with the LEMDO repository. Read The LEMDO Platform and Repository and Repository Structure, and watch our Repository Tour on YouTube.
Learn how to work in your command line. Read Work in the Command Line (Terminal).
Install a Subversion (SVN) client. Read Install a Subversion Client: Mac, Install a Subversion Client: Windows, or Install a Subversion Client: Linux as appropriate for your OS.
Check out the LEMDO repository. Read Check Out the LEMDO Repository.
Install Oxygen (the application that we use to edit XML). Read Install Oxygen.
Do a test commit with a LEMDO team member.
Familiarize yourself with the standard workflow in your command line that you will follow each work session. Read Workflow for Working in the Command Line (Terminal). We recommend bookmarking that documentation page, as encoders refer to it frequently.
You can find additional documentation for beginning work with LEMDO in Chapter 2. Getting Started with LEMDO.

Typical Workflow for Encoders

Once you have gotten set up to work in the repository, you will likely follow this workflow for encoding an edition:
Create an edition landing page if there is not one already for the edition.
Encode the semi-diplomatic transcription for an early edition of your play.
Generate a basic modernized text from the encoded semi-diplomatic transcription.
Encode the edition’s collation, anchoring it to the modernized text.
Create a bibliography file from the LEMDO template and begin populating it with your collation witnesses.
Check the encoding of the modernized text, correcting it as needed. The basic encoding that is in place when you generate the modernized text from the semi-diplomatic transcription will ensure that it is a valid file, but needs to be updated to reflect editorial decisions.
Encode the edition’s annotations, anchoring them to the modernized text.
Encode your critical paratexts, adding sources to your bibliography as you go.
Check that the edition bibliography contains all sources referenced in the edition. If they are not already in LEMDO’s sitewide bibliography, ask the LEMDO team to add them.
Check that all edition components have been added to the edition landing page.

Other Resources

Further Reading

In addition to the getting started documentation pages, encoders typically find the following pages useful when beginning their encoding work:
You will find documentation chapters on encoding each piece of an edition in our Documentation Index. The chapters are laid out to reflect the typcial encoding workflow described in Typical Workflow for Encoders, starting with semi-diplomatic transcriptions and ending with critical paratexts.
You can quickly search for all documentation that has been written specifically for encoders by going to the search page and selecting Documentation from the Document Types menu and Encoder from the LEMDO Target Audience menu.

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.

Kate LeBere

Project Manager, 2020–2021. Assistant Project Manager, 2019–2020. Textual Remediator and Encoder, 2019–2021. Kate LeBere completed her BA (Hons.) in History and English at the University of Victoria in 2020. During her degree she published papers in The Corvette (2018), The Albatross (2019), and PLVS VLTRA (2020) and presented at the English Undergraduate Conference (2019), Qualicum History Conference (2020), and the Digital Humanities Summer Institute’s Project Management in the Humanities Conference (2021). While her primary research focus was sixteenth and seventeenth century England, she completed her honours thesis on Soviet ballet during the Russian Cultural Revolution. She is currently a student at the University of British Columbia’s iSchool, working on her masters in library and information science.

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.

Rylyn Christensen

Rylyn Christensen is an English major at the University of Victoria.

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.

Glossary

Edition directory
“A directory (i.e., folder) in the LEMDO repository containing all the files for an edition. The name of each edition directory is the abbreviation for the edition, such as AYL for As You Like It.”
repository or repo
“The repository contains all the files in the LEMDO project. The LEMDO repository is saved to a server in the basement of the Clearihue Building at UVic. All LEMDO files are under version control through Subversion, a repository maintenance tool that keeps a complete history of every change ever made to every LEMDO file.”
Subversion
“An open-source version control system that allows us to keep, track, and restore every version of every file in the repository.”
xml:id
“A unique value that we use to tag an entity. Strictly speaking, @xml:id is an attribute that can be added to any XML element. We use it as a shorthand for “value of the xml:id”. Every person, role, glyph, ligature, bibliographical entry, act, scene, speech, paragraph, page beginning, XML file, division within XML files, and anchor has a unique xml:id value, some of which are assigned automatically during the processing of our XML files.”

Metadata

Authority title Quickstart for Encoders
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.