By Ian MacInnes, Albion College & Tamara Stasik, Depauw University

Resources — (the actual teaching module)

This module gives instructors both an introduction to TEI and manuscript transption and a complete template for integrating a 1-2 week unit on  into the content of an existing humanities course.

The Textual Encoding Initiative (TEI) is a standard set of rules for encoding or “tagging” texts so they can later be processed and presented in many ways. Asking students to learn TEI is also a powerful classroom tool. It encourages students to develop an analytical approach to language, it helps them understand what collaboration means in the humanities context, and it encourages them to think about how texts might be presented or networked. Manuscript transcription encourages the same skills as TEI and leads naturally to it as a way of representing and disseminating manuscripts in digital form. This workshop is designed to show anyone unfamiliar with TEI both how the system works and how it can be adapted on a small scale (using our module) to enrich courses in the humanities and social sciences. We will focus on using manuscript sources.