LEMDO: Quickstart for Remediators

Quickstart for Remediators

This documentation is for new-to-the-team remediators, including those who have done TEI encoding on other projects. Now you are taking on the task of remediating texts that were encoded in another markup language before being programmatically converted to a rough version of LEMDO’s TEI customization. This documentation will introduce you to remediating texts for LEMDO and the typical workflow for remediating an edition. It will also direct you towards further helpful documentation.

Prior Reading

User Guide

Introduction to Markup, XML, and TEI

Quickstart for Encoders

Introduction

The LEMDO project has been tasked by UVic to republish (or, in some cases, publish for the first time) editions that were under contract with LEMDO’s predecessor, the Internet Shakespeare Editions (ISE). Our remit includes the remediation of plays that were part of the ISE anthology itself, and those plays prepared for the Digital Renaissance Editions and Queen’s Men Editions anthologies that used its platform.

A vital part of this republication work is converting the edition files from the ISE’s markup language, IML, to TEI-XML and then remediating each file so that all the files conform to LEMDO’s customization of TEI. As a remediator, you will work on the converted files to ensure they meet LEMDO’s encoding standards.

Over time, we have also taken on the work of converting and remediating the TEI-encoded files created by the Text Creation Partnership (TCP) in order to provide our editors with a semi-diplomatic transcription of one or more witnesses. The LEMDO team has become skilled at preparing these texts.

In 2026, LEMDO began remediating the TEI-encoded files of the Cambridge Works of Ben Jonson Online.

Remediation: What is It?

The Oxford English Dictionary says that remediation is the action of remedying or correcting something (OED, remediation, n. 1.). As a LEMDO remediator or remediating editor¹, you will certainly be taking that action with respect to texts.

We also use the term to describe the process of taking a text produced in one medium and reproducing it in another medium. For us, reproducing means “to produce again”. It is not our job to create exactly the same thing again. LEMDO remediations necessarily change the text being remediated. Our remediations entail re-encoding the text, which invites us to confront the text anew.

Conversion versus Remediation

The full remediation workflow entails programmatic conversion processes run by a developer, followed by evaluation, correction, and tidying by a human markup editor (i.e., you in your role as remediator).

The programmatic conversions are multi-step processes that require validation at each step. The code for these conversions was written by developers Martin Holmes, Joey Takeda, and Tracey El Hajj. The developers run the conversions because the IML source texts have to be run through an IML validator and iteratively corrected and converted.

As a remediator, you won’t have anything to do with the conversion processes (although you are welcome to read more about them at Convert IML to LEMDO TEI and Convert TCP to LEMDO TEI). But, as the first person to work on the file after conversion, you are in a position to give feedback to the developers.

If you notice that you are correcting the same problem repeatedly, flag the problem for the LEMDO project manager or director, who will then decide if we need to build that correction into the conversion.

If the correction is not one that we can build into the conversion, consider using a regular expression (regex). Regex is more sophisticated than a simple find-and-replace function; it allows you to replace one pattern with another pattern in cases where different text nodes, attributes, or values prevent a find-and-replace. We have a growing library of regex that we have written for LEMDO remediations. For a guide on using regex and a list of prefabricated regex written for LEMDO remediations, see Text Conversions with Regular Expressions.

You may also contact a senior member of the LEMDO team to request a new regex. Describe the problem carefully, providing both an example from the text-as-converted and the end result of your intervention as remediator.

The Editor and the Remediator

As a remediator, you will need to balance the need to respect the editor’s initial work, which was produced under a particular set of constraints at a particular point in time, with the opportunities offered by LEMDO’s TEI encoding practices to clarify and improve their work. In some cases, LEMDO asks you, the remediator, to be more precise than the editor could be. Most cases are straightforward for skilled readers of texts (a job requirement for LEMDO remediators). In other cases, you will need to ask for help from someone with better knowledge of the edition and the work being edited.

If the editor is still active in the profession and willing to help, we will be able to put questions directly to the original editor. In some cases, you will be able to correspond with the editor yourself, after the LEMDO director makes an email introduction. In other cases, you’ll be asked to put questions to the LEMDO director or project manager first for triage and forwarding.

If we are not able to call upon the editor, then the anthology lead(s) will answer questions for us. In some cases, the LEMDO director (who is an editor herself and has editorial roles with a number of the LEMDO anthologies) will make a judgement call.

The bottom line is that it is not your job to re-edit the text. You will not change an established modern text, revise a critical paratext (including annotations), or add any new information. You may ask questions, flag errors, make suggestions, and make those minor corrections that are within your remit. But you will always keep in mind that you are remediating someone else’s scholarly work.

Remediating Editor

In some cases, the remediator (usually an established scholar or a senior graduate student) makes such significant contributions and corrections to the edition that they come to play the role of remediating editor. Remediators have become remediating editors under various circumstances: (1) the original editor is deceased, (2) the semi-diplomatic transcription was never checked or corrected by an editor and the remediator takes on a critically significant role, or (3) the original editor empowers the remediator to take on a bigger role.

Adding your Change Elements

Other than tracking your daily work via the


                                          <revisionDesc>

, you will not normally need to intervene in the


                                          <teiHeader>

. The work of checking the metadata in the


                                          <teiHeader>

falls to the LEMDO director in consultation with the editors and the anthology leads, usually just before the edition is released.

As a remediator, you will receive credit for your work on files in the edition via the responsibility statements in the edition page. You leave a record of your contributions to each file via the


                                          <change>

elements in the


                                          <revisionDesc>

of the file. Change elements are the primary mechanism for you to track your work, and the only permanent, publicly available encoded record of your contributions to a file.

Workflow to Get Started with LEMDO

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

Typical Workflow for Remediators

Once you have gotten set up to work in the repository, you will likely follow this workflow for remediating an edition:

Bibliography: This ensures that all the editor’s sources are in our sitewide bibliography and that we can point to their citations from all their other files.

General introduction: If you are new to the play, you may want to turn your attention next to the critical paratext that offers a general introduction to the play. This file might be called Critical Introduction, General Introduction, or Introduction. Encoding this file will give you a chance to read something about the play before you have to encode the text of the play.

Character list and speech prefixes: The character list goes in the


                                                <teiHeader>

of the modernized text file.

The rest of the modernized text: If there is more than one modernized text (as is the case for multi-text plays like Hamlet, Henry V, and others), consult with the Director about which one is the best classroom text to determine the remediation priority.

Annotations: You may switch to other critical paratexts when/as you need a break from annotations.

Remainder of the critical paratexts.

Collations.

Semi-diplomatic transcription(s): Consult with the LEMDO Director before you embark on the semi-diplomatic transcription(s). We are choosing to defer some of these remediations in order to get all of the modernized texts into usable form for teachers and students.

Note that the order of remediation is different from the order of editing. Editors begin by preparing or proofing the semi-diplomatic transcription. Then they may choose to either do the collation of early editions or modernize the text.

Other Resources

LEMDO YouTube video: Getting Started (Editorial)

Notes

1.In a few cases, the work of remediation is so extensive that the remediator (usually a senior LEMDO team member) is in the position of making editorial decisions, especially when the original editor is no longer available to provide direction.↑

Prosopography

Chloe Mee

Chloe Mee (she/her) worked as a research assistant with the LEMDO team over several periods from 2022 to 2025. She graduated from the University of Victoria in 2025 with a BA (Hons with distinction) in English. She will be studying at the University of British Columbia to complete her MA in English. Chloe collaborated with the LEMDO team on a VKURA internship in summer 2022, mainly focusing on Hamlet quartos. Following her internship, she also worked as a research assistant in 2022–23 and 2025.

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.

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 Remediators
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.