Quickstart for Legacy Editors

This documentation is for editors whose editions were originally encoded in the ISE Markup Language (IML)—i.e., editors who finished or began working on editions for the Internet Shakespeare Editions, Digital Renaissance Editions, or Queen’s Men Editions before December 2018. This page will introduce you to the typical workflow for remediating an edition previously encoded in IML and will direct you towards further helpful documentation.

Prior Reading

Introduction

All editions that were encoded in IML that are being published on the LEMDO platform must be marked up using LEMDO’s customization of the TEI-XML encoding language. We have converted the encoding of your edition or components thereof to TEI P5 and are in the process of remediating your files for republication on the LEMDO platform. The full remediation workflow entails programmatic conversion processes run by a developer, followed by evaluation, correction, and tidying by a human markup editor
Your role in the process of remediation and what you need to learn depends on several factors:
The completeness of your edition in December 2018 at the moment when the old ISE server was taken offline.
Your willingness to keep working on the edition or to pass the components thereof to another editor.
Your willingness to learn TEI at least well enough to edit the files that we create for you.
The extent to which your anthology lead(s) can:
Support ongoing work in IML.
Support you in the transition to TEI.
Oversee the remediation process themselves.
Just as LEMDO defers to anthology leads on textual or editorial matters that are within the anthology’s control, LEMDO will defer to anthology leads about the best way to proceed with the remediation of your edition.

The Plan for Your Edition and Anthology

All QME and DRE editions are being republished along with the QME and DRE anthologies. Some ISE editions are being republished in the New Internet Shakespeare Editions anthology.1 The new LEMDO-generated QME and DRE anthologies will include all the content from the old anthologies and replace them at the old URL as well as the new URLs (lemdo.uvic.ca/qme and lemdo.uvic.ca/dre). However, the old ISE website (at https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca) has been staticized in its 2018 form (with minor revisions to the HTML undertaken by Michael Best in Fall 2022) and will be preserved at its original URL for as long as it remains functional. The New Internet Shakespeare Editions, to be published at lemdo.uvic.ca/nise, will not replace the old ISE nor will it include all of the extensive ISE materials that were ancillary to the editions (e.g., image database, performance database2). Given that a user survey answered by 198 people identified the facsimiles as the most important asset of the ISE, the NISE will include all of the facsimiles collected by the ISE plus new facsimiles.

Workflow to Get Started with LEMDO

The tasks you must do as a legacy editor depend on whether or not you will be working on the encoding of your edition in the LEMDO repository. All legacy editors should:
Read this page. You may also wish to read the Quickstart for Editors.
Email the LEMDO team to receive detailed instructions on getting started and to set up an initial training meeting. If you have an RA who is not a member of the LEMDO team (i.e., not at UVic), introduce them to us via email.
Apply for a UVic affiliate ID and a NetLink ID if you are not at UVic and you do not already have them. 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.
If you have an RA, ensure that they also apply for a UVic affiliate ID, create a NetLink ID, and send us their NetLink ID and a bio-bibliographical note.
Additionally, if you will be involved in the remediation of your edition, you should complete the following training tasks:
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 encoding editors refer to it frequently.
You will find additional documentation for beginning work with LEMDO in Chapter 2. Getting Started with LEMDO.

Workflow for Legacy Editors

There is no one workflow because IML-encoded editions were in various states of completion in 2018 and editors are at different career/life stages, but we can describe some of the workflows that we have implemented for some editions:
Finished, peer-reviewed, and published edition:
LEMDO fully remediates the edition; the editor proofreads the result before we publish3.
LEMDO fully remediates the edition. The bibliography, performance history, and critical history can be updated by the original editor(s) or another scholar.
LEMDO does not remediate the edition, a decision that can be made by the anthology lead(s) or by the original editor(s). The anthology seeks a new editor to prepare a new edition.
Partially finished edition with some components peer-reviewed:
LEMDO remediates and republishes the peer-reviewed sections. Unfinished components of the editions can be completed by the original editor, passed on to a new editor, or withdrawn.
Partially finished edition that has not yet undergone any peer review:
LEMDO will remediate the semi-diplomatic transcriptions (formerly old-spelling texts) and update them to match the particular copy that LEMDO has permission to embed in the transcription. Since unfinished/unreviewed components of the editions can be completed by the original editor, passed on to a new editor, or withdrawn, LEMDO will take direction from anthology leads on the question of if/when to remediate unfinished components.
On the matter of switching from IML to TEI, we have also faced a number of scenarios. We prefer to get all editors working in TEI but can accommodate editors who wish to finish an edition in IML.4 Options:
LEMDO converts your IML files (provided they are perfect or near-perfect IML) to TEI and then you finish your work in TEI. If the edition is large or the IML is messy, LEMDO will ask you or the anthology lead(s) to contribute to the cost of remediation.
You finish your work in IML, preparing your text and markup in a text file (.txt), in a word-processed file (.doc, .docx, or .odt), or in a GoogleDoc. Your anthology leads handle the peer review before LEMDO encodes the files in TEI. LEMDO may ask you or the anthology lead(s) to contribute to the cost of remediation.
Other arrangements can be negotiated.

Further Reading

In addition to the getting started documentation pages, editors typically find the following pages useful when beginning their editorial 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 typical encoding workflow, starting with semi-diplomatic transcriptions and ending with critical paratexts.
You can quickly search for all documentation that has been written specifically for editors by going to the search page and selecting Documentation from the Document Types menu and Editor from the LEMDO Target Audience menu.

Notes

1.Some ISE editors have passed away, retired, withdrawn their work, or chosen to pass their editorial work on to other editors.↑
2. Shakespeare’s Life and Times is undergoing extensive revision by Kate McPherson; the first release of entries has been published at https://lemdo.uvic.ca/emeeas a standalone anthology called Early Modern England Encyclopedia.↑
3.If the editor is deceased, retired, no longer in academia, or unable to proofread, then the anthology leads take on the proofreading role↑
4.To be clear, if you complete an edition in IML and wish to embark on a new edition, you must do so in TEI. LEMDO will not accept any new editions encoded in IML.↑

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 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.

Kate McPherson

Kate McPherson is Professor of English and Honors Program Director at Utah Valley University (Orem, UT, USA). In 2015, she began working to redevelop Shakespeare’s Life and Times, created by Michael Best, into the Early Modern England Encyclopedia. Her other publications include commentary on Pericles and The Comedy of Errors for the New Oxford Shakespeare (2016); the co-edited volumes Stages of Engagement: Drama and Religion in Post-Reformation England with James Mardock (Duquesne University Press, 2014) and Shakespeare Expressed: Page, Stage, and Classroom in Shakespeare and His Contemporaries, with Kathryn M. Moncrief and Sarah Enloe (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 2013). With Kathryn M. Moncrief, Kate has also two edited collections, Performing Pedagogy in Early Modern England: Gender, Instruction, and Performance (Ashgate, 2011) and Performing Maternity in Early Modern England (Ashgate 2008). She has also published numerous articles on early modern maternity in scholarly journals. Kate participated in the 2008 National Endowment for the Humanities Institute, Shakespeare’s Blackfriars: The Study, the Stage, the Classroom, at the American Shakespeare Center. She also served as Play Seminar Director, a public humanities position, for the Utah Shakespeare Festival in 2017 and 2018.

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.

Michael Best

Michael Best is Professor Emeritus at the University of Victoria, BC. He founded the Internet Shakespeare Editions in 1996, and was Coordinating Editor until 2017, contributing two editions to the ISE: King John and King Lear (the latter also available in print from Broadview Press). In print, he has published editions of works of Elizabethan magic and huswifery, a collection of letters from the Australian goldfields, and Shakespeare on the Art of Love (2008). He contributed regular columns for the Shakespeare Newsletter on Electronic Shakespeares, and has written many articles and chapters for both print and online books and journals, principally on questions raised by the new medium in the editing and publication of texts. He has delivered papers and plenary lectures on electronic media and the Internet Shakespeare Editions at conferences in Canada, the USA, the UK, Spain, Australia, and Japan.

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.

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

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 Legacy 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.