Quickstart for MoMS Editors

This documentation is for editors who are preparing texts for the MoMS (MoEML Mayoral Shows) anthology. Typically, MoMS editors will not need all of information available in the LEMDO technical documentation. This page will introduce you to the typical workflow for encoding a MoMS edition with LEMDO and will direct you towards the sections of documentation that you will need.

Introduction

MoMS editions are unique on the LEMDO platform in that they do not require a semi-diplomatic transcription, they frequently link out to the MoEML website, and their modernized texts do not typically follow the act/scene/speech division structure common in early modern plays. As such, your workflow for completing your edition will be slightly different from that of a non-MoMS editor. You will not need to read our documentation on semi-diplomatic transcriptions, and you will likely need to consult with the LEMDO team about how to encode the structure of your modernized text.
As a MoMS editor, you will edit your edition according to the MoMS Editorial Guidelines. Please direct questions about your mayoral show and editorial principles to your anthology leads. You will either encode your own work or will hire somebody else to encode it for you according to LEMDO’s encoding guidelines. If you are encoding your own edition as well as editing it, you will also want to read the Quickstart for Encoders.

Workflow to Get Started with LEMDO

The tasks that you must complete to get started with LEMDO are outlined in the Quickstart for Editors page’s Workflow to Get Started with LEMDO.

Typical Workflow for MoMS Editors

Once you have gotten set up to work in the repository, you will likely follow this basic workflow. For editors that are working directly in TEI:
Ask Janelle to create a basic modernized file for you from MoEML’s semi-diplomatic transcription of your mayoral show.
Collate necessary editions for your show and write textual notes. You may also start work on your textual introduction if you are writing one for your edition.
Create your edition bibliography from LEMDO’s bibliography template, add your collation witnesses, and begin adding sources from your critical paratexts.
Emend the modernized text of your show and check in with your anthology leads.
Modernize your show.
Write the remainder of your annotations.
Write your remaining critical paratexts.
Ensure that your bibliography is complete
Ensure that your edition landing page contains all of the content that you want to appear for readers.
If you have already prepared your edition (or parts thereof) in a word processing program, you will follow the same general workflow, though you will not need to emend or modernize at this point. Before you begin to encode your text, you will first need to move your text into Oxygen. If you have prepared your texts in Microsoft Word or Google Docs, copy-and-paste the text into a .txt file (e.g., in your Notebook app) and then copy the text from the .txt file into Oxygen.1 You may choose to encode it as you go, or work in passes (e.g., encode all the structural elements, then encode all the names, then encode all the foreign words, if that procedure works best for you). For the first pass, Janelle likes to paste and encode the structural elements one paragraph or one speech at a time.

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 typcial encoding workflow described in Typical Workflow for MoMS Editors, though it does also include documentation for semi-diplomatic transcriptions.
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.We never copy-and-paste directly from Word into Oxygen as doing so can introduce text and formatting errors that are very difficult and time consuming to locate and correct.↑

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.

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.

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 women’s 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

Authority title Quickstart for MoMS 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.