Text Encoding and the Text Encoding Initiative

This course is an introduction to the theories, practices, and methods that are used in the humanities for the encoding of texts for research, for preservation, and for online distribution. It focuses on a particular method, that of text encoding, using eXtensible Markup Language (XML), and a specialised schema common to humanities research, The Text Encoding Language (TEI).

While there are other equally valid ways to store, preserve, and distribute textual data (such as using a relational structure), this course will not cover those methods. Rather, this course focuses on text encoding, its history and uses. There are also practical hands-on exercises which allow students to practice the theory learned.