Release Process and Timelines

This page is designed for Anthology Leads (the Coordinating Editors of the NISE, DRE, or MoMS anthologies; the General Editors of the QME, EMEE, DRD, EMDP, and Douai anthologies).

Rationale

Having a clear understanding of the release process and reasonable expectations for the amount of time that each step of the process takes can make the release process go more smoothly and run on schedule. This documentation is designed to give you an overview of the anticipated process and timeline for an anthology release based on the LEMDO team’s publication experiences. We recommend consulting it as you plan your anthology’s release.
Note that the size of your release will impact the amount of time that the run-up to release takes; a smaller release will take less time than a larger release. You must notify the LEMDO team at least three calendar months ahead of your desired release date for a small release (e.g., you are releasing one edition or two editions). The feasibility of your release will depend on other tasks in the LEMDO team’s workflow. The precise release date and time will depend on our developers’ availability.

Practice: Determine Files to be Published

Before you can plan what needs to be done to ensure that your files are ready to be published, determine which files and editions you will include in your release. These should be files and editions that are already completely written and encoded. You should be in communication with your editors so that you can anticipate when they will be finished work on their editions.
LEMDO recommends doing small releases, especially for your anthology’s first release. By publishing only a few editions at a time, you will reduce the amount of work that your anthology needs to do and the amount of time that it takes to complete that work during the release process. You may even decide to only publish your anthology about pages in your first release so that both your first and subsequent releases are made smaller and easier.
Your anthology will include only the editions that you select to be published by including them in your anthology’s TEI Corpus file (the file in your anthology directory with an @xml:id value identical to your anthology ID; e.g., moms.xml). Only files that have a value of "published" on the @status attribute of their <revisionDesc> can be published.
Once you have determined the files that you want to publish, let the LEMDO team know that you would like to prepare for a website release. Let us know at least three months in advance of when you would like to publish for a small release. For bigger releases, touch base with the LEMDO team up to a year in advance.

Practice: Pre-Release

Before You Contact LEMDO About Publishing

Determine which files you are going to publish in your upcoming release. Remember that the fewer files you publish, the sooner you will be able to release.
Finalize content in the files you are going to publish: enter revisions arising from the peer-review process, check citations and references, and ensure that you have made all the links you want to make.
Call for updated bios from contributors, if necessary.

Minimum Three Months Ahead of Release Date

Notify the LEMDO team of your desired release date and which editions you intend to include.
Create a pre-freeze progress chart that lists all the files you are publishing or updating in this release. Having this chart will help you to determine a timeline for your freeze and ensure that you do not miss any required tasks. People often notice errors and omissions during this stage; anticipate that it will take a full month to complete your pre-freeze tasks. For more information on pre-freeze tasks (including creating a pre-freeze progress chart), see Before an Anthology Freeze.
Proofread pages.
Standardize metadata across all pages.
Write release notes.
Let the LEMDO Director know when you are close to being ready to freeze your anthology. The LEMDO team can then support you to plan a timeline for the freeze. It is important that your team knows when the freeze will be and what it entails to ensure that they understand that they can add no new content during the freeze and that they complete their pre-freeze tasks on time. For more information on freezes, see Freeze.

One Week Ahead of Release: Freeze Tasks

When you are nearly finished with your pre-freeze tasks, you create a final release progress chart. Share it with your team after you have completed all of your pre-freeze tasks. These tasks include:
Check the metadata for each Web page.
Proofread to correct any glaring errors.
Click every link on each Web page.
Change the status of each page to "published".
For more information about the tasks to be done during the freeze and on creating your final release progress chart, see Freeze.
The LEMDO director will announce the freeze when you have finished your pre-freeze tasks. There should be no new content added or major revisions made from this point on.
This stage typically takes about a week. We prefer to publish early in the week (on Mondays when possible) to ensure that we are able to give the release our full and unrushed attention. To allow your team a full week for the freeze period, plan to freeze your anthology at the end of a work week and to complete your final release tasks at the end of the following week.

One Day Ahead of Release

The LEMDO team will take over once you have completed your final release tasks during the freeze. We will do a final check to ensure that your anthology is ready to be published, then we will publish your beta site.
There are sometimes final corrections to be made in this stage. You can anticipate that it will take about a day to release your site. We prefer to publish early in the week; please plan to be done your final release tasks by Monday morning of the week that you wish to publish your anthology.

Practice: Evaluate Your Release

(One month)
LEMDO will do a release evaluation and report after your anthology has been published. Your role in this stage of the release process is to respond to release questionnaires that the LEMDO Project Manager emails you. The Project Manager will incorporate all team members’ questionnaire responses into the our release report. All questionnaire responses will be anonymous. This in turn allows us to evaluate what went well during the release process, and what we can improve on in future releases. The LEMDO Project Manager will send you the final release report when it is complete.
Anticipate that it will take about one month for you to receive the release report after your anthology has been released. For more information about the publication and evaluation of your anthology, see Publish and Evaluate Your Anthology Release.

Prosopography

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.

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 Release Process and Timelines
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.