LEMDO: Create a Unique Value for an xml:id Attribute

Create a Unique Value for an xml:id Attribute

LEMDO uses


                                    @xml:id

attributes across the project to give unique identifiers to various entities: people, productions, sources, projects, organizations, characters, divisions in documents, paragraphs in documents, and anchors in documents. We have thousands of


                                    @xml:id

attributes in the LEMDO project, and the value (id) of each one of them must be unique across the entire project. Duplicate ids will break the build.

For edition files and identifiers within edition files, we meet the need for uniqueness by insisting that every


                                    @xml:id

value begin with emd followed the abbreviation of the play. For example, every xml:id created for the edition of Famous Victories begins with emdFV.

For anthology pages, we meet the need for uniqueness by insisting that every


                                    @xml:id

value begins with the abbreviation for the anthology. For example, the About page for QME has the


                                    @xml:id

value of "qme_about", which is also the name of the file (qme_about.xml). The about page for DRE has the


                                    @xml:id

value of "dre_about". (Note that when we build your final anthology, we remove the qme_ and dre_ portion of the file names to keep your final, public-facing URLs lightweight.)

For anchors, we meet the need for uniqueness by insisting that every


                                    @xml:id

value begin with the full name of the file. Every anchor in the modernized text of Famous Victories (emdFV_M) begins with emdFV_M_.

Practice: Create Unique IDs for Entities in Sitewide Databases

This section pertains mainly to LEMDO Team members at UVic: When you are creating an


                                       @xml:id

value for an entity in one of the sitewide database files (PERS1, PROS1, GLOSS1, HAND1, BIBL1, PROD1, ORGS1, or TAXO1), you must check the complete list of LEMDO


                                       @xml:id

values to ensure that you are creating a new value. These ids are generally four uppercase letters followed by a number (JENS1, SHAK1, ADAM1, LEMD3, and so on).

We have two ways of viewing all the


                                       @xml:id

values in the project (except for the anchor, speech, and paragraph ids). Note that you must be on the Jenkins site looking at the most recent build. When you begin working for LEMDO, we will give you the links to these pages.

Generated .txt list: This page loads in your browser and lists only the ids. It is a lightweight page that loads quickly and completely. Because it does not give any details about the entity, the page is useful mainly for determining whether or not an ID has been used already. Search the page with a simple Ctrl + F.

Generated HTML page: This page loads in your browser as a table. The three columns of the table list:

The ID with a hyperlink to the item

Item type

Title (if applicable—not all entities have titles)

This page is huge and slow the load. Some browsers will not completely load a table as long as this one. Before you search the page, ensure that it has completely loaded. The table loads alphabetically by default and the final entries will be ids beginning with Z.

Assign the next available id. If you want to create an ID beginning with ADAM, search the page for the string ADAM. If your search shows that ADAM1, ADAM2, and ADAM3 have been used, then the next available ID is ADAM4.

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	Create a Unique Value for an xml:id Attribute
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.