Last Updated: 12/10/19 - CCM + ENC

PDF version can be found here.

This guide serves as an introduction to, and guide for, the Amy Lowell Letters Project, a digital critical edition of the selected letters of American poet Amy Lowell (1874-1925).

• This project transcribes, annotates, and encodes letters written by Amy Lowell, archived in her collected papers at Harvard University’s Houghton Library (MS Lowell 19.1). The letters have been scanned by Houghton Library from Lowell’s papers, and can be viewed through Harvard’s HOLLIS for Archival Discovery. Unless noted otherwise, scanned letters represent copies of correspondence typed by secretaries, proofread by Lowell, and saved for her records, and thus may not reflect changes in final drafts sent to her correspondents.

• ALLP follows TEI guidelines for encoding letters.

• In encoding, our priority has been to tag information that can be used to trace the networks that Lowell helped to build—alliances, feuds, literary movements, etc. For now, this takes precedence over documenting the materiality of the letters. While Lowell’s letters have relatively fewer additions, deletions, and modifications than other collections, we do not wish for the labor and process behind the letters to be erased, especially as this work was primarily done by unnamed secretaries. Therefore, we encourage readers to spend time with the linked facsimiles and consider their physical qualities and labor in the HOLLIS archive.

For now we will link each letter to its to HOLLIS facsimile; but could eventually, with Harvard’s permission, we will have JPEGs on the site.

• File Locations

  • Each letter will have its own folder on GitHub (ALLP >> Encoding >> Letters). The folder will ultimately contain the letter’s image (.jpeg or .pdf), transcription (.doc), and XML (.xml) files.

• File Names

  • The standardized file name for each letter will be without any punctuation, and consist of [Last Name][FirstName][Year][Month][Day]. Therefore, the letter from Amy Lowell to Ellery Sedgwick on September 29, 1914, will be referred to as:
    • SedgwickEllery19140929.jpeg
      • If multiple images, append a number + underscore at the beginning of the file name (1_SedgwickEllery19140929.jpeg)
    • SedgwickEllery19140929.doc
    • SedgwickEllery19140929.xml

Encoders should reference the ALLP TEI Header Metadata spreadsheet for information about individual letters to include in the TEI header. The TEI Header Template is located and updated on GitHub. As of 12/10/19, the header template is as follows:

<?xml-model href="http://www.tei-c.org/release/xml/tei/custom/schema/relaxng/tei_all.rng" type="application/xml" schematypens="http://relaxng.org/ns/structure/1.0"?>
<!DOCTYPE doc [
<!ENTITY personography SYSTEM "ALLP/siteIndex/allpPersonography.xml">
]>
<TEI xmlns="http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0">
   <teiHeader>
      <fileDesc>
         <titleStmt>
            <title>Letter from <persName key="amy_lowell">Amy Lowell</persName> to <persName key=""> <!-- Insert recipient name and key ID --> </persName>, <date when=""
                  > <!-- Insert date --> </date></title>
            <author key="amy_lowell">Amy Lowell</author>
            <editor ref=""> <!-- Insert editor (whoever wrote the footnotes) here --> </editor>
            <sponsor>Center for Textual Studies and Digital Humanities, Loyola University
               Chicago</sponsor>
            <principal ref="mb">Melissa Bradshaw</principal>
            <respStmt>
               <resp>Transcription completed by</resp>
               <persName ref=""> <!-- insert name --> </persName>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <resp>Transcription proofed by</resp>
               <persName ref=""> <!-- insert name --></persName>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <resp>Encoding completed by</resp>
               <persName ref=""> <!-- insert name --> </persName>
            </respStmt>
            <respStmt>
               <resp>Encoding assistance provided by</resp>
               <persName ref=""> <!-- insert name --> </persName>
            </respStmt>
         </titleStmt>
         <publicationStmt>
            <authority>Amy Lowell Letters Project</authority>
            <pubPlace>Chicago, IL, USA</pubPlace>
            <date when=""> <!-- Add date when published to website here --> </date>
            <availability>
               <p>Reproduced by courtesy of the Houghton Library Repository.</p>
               <licence>Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
                  4.0 International license.</licence>
            </availability>
         </publicationStmt>
         <sourceDesc>
            <msDesc>
               <msIdentifier>
                  <institution>Harvard College Library</institution>
                  <repository>Houghton Library Repository</repository>
                  <collection>Amy Lowell Correspondence</collection>
                  <idno> <!-- Insert item's HOLLIS ID number here --> </idno>
               </msIdentifier>
               <physDesc> <!-- Insert physical description here. --> 
               </physDesc>
            </msDesc>
         </sourceDesc>
      </fileDesc>
      <encodingDesc>
         <editorialDecl>
            <p>This letter contains references to the following: <!-- Insert tagged subject keywords here; will link to keyword-ography --> </p>
         </editorialDecl>
      </encodingDesc>
      <profileDesc>
         <particDesc>
            &personography;
         </particDesc>
         <textClass>
            <!-- document-level keywords applied here -->
         </textClass>
      </profileDesc>
   </teiHeader>
   <text>
      <body>
         <p>Some text here.</p>
      </body>
   </text>
</TEI>

1. Mark the start and end of each paragraph with <p> tags.
2. Replace special characters (&, <,>, and quotations in certain circumstances). XML special characters and their replacements can be found here.
3. Mark page breaks with <pb>.
4. Tag the following:
   • People
   • Places
   • Dates
   • Publications
   • Organizations
   • Themes (will be included in a list in the header, but tag themes in the text when the reference is explicit, e.g. outright says “Imagism” etc.)
   • Transactions
5. Note other unique elements that might be captured with TEI (foreign languages, etc.)
6. Encode editorial footnotes (found in .doc transcription).
7. Compare XML document to transcription and original facsimile images.
8. Check XML for errors in oXygen.
9. Leave encoder notes for any places that need to be revisited or marked for encoding-related information.

Every key ID will link to an entry in our Site Index. Ultimately, the Site Index will consist of the following -ographies:

1. Personography (people) – <persName key=" ">
2. Placeography (places) – <placeName key=" ">
3. Orgography (organizations) – <orgName key=" ">
4. Bibliography (publications) – <title key=" " level=" ">
   • Title levels may include:
     • “a” – analytic (article or poem, published within a larger work like a monograph or journal)
     • “m” – monographic (book or other distinct publication)
     • “j” – journal (any serial or periodical publication such as a journal, magazine, or newspaper)
     • “u” – unpublished
5. Theme-ography (project-specific themes) – <rs key=" " type="theme">

Event-ography: TBD

If an encoder encounters an item without a key ID in the Site Index, they should add an entry to the “Possible Additions” sheet on the ALLP Site Index – Master List spreadsheet. Suggestions will be reviewed by the editor, and added to the Site Index accordingly.

Encoders for ALLP should use the following guidelines for reference when encoding letters for the project:

• Additions
  • <add place="above">Harper's</add>
  • See: TEI
• Deletions
  • A deleted word you can still read: <del rend="strikethrough">Harper's</del>
  • A deleted word you cannot read: <del rend="strikethrough"><gap quantity="1" unit="word" reason="illegible" /></del>
  • See: TEI

• Include in physical description in the Header under <physDesc>
• See: TEI

• <date when="2019-10-22">October 10th, 2019</date>
• See: TEI

• <!-- Date, Encoder Initials: Write your comment here. -->
• Example: <!-- 2019-12-19 CCM: This is my encoder comment! -->

TBD

• In header, for now link to HOLLIS link; potential for JPEGs on our site later.
• See: TEI

• Anchor in text with footnotes at the bottom.
• In text: <anchor xml:id="n1"/>
• Bottom: <note target="#n1" resp="mb">Williams was an Associate Editor of Alfred Kreymborg’s little magazine Others: A Magazine of the New Verse (1915-1919) and guest edited the July 1916 number (Vol. 3, No. 1), which included Lowell’s poem “Chinoiseries.” At the time of Lowell’s letter, the magazine had briefly ceased publication, and would resume in December of 1916.</note>
• See: TEI

• <foreign xml:lang="fr">Je m’appelle Dinah</foreign>
• See: TEI

• Material or physical qualities about the letter (letterheads, paper types, marks, remarkable typography, archival annotations, etc.) should be noted in the header under <physDesc>
• Example:

 <physDesc>
          <p>Seven pages typewritten in black ink.Unsigned.</p>
 </physDesc>

• See: TEI

• Organizations will include clubs, societies, publishers, and plural groups of people (“The Aldingtons”).
• <orgName key="macmillan">Macmillan</orgName>
• See: TEI

• </pb>
• See: TEI

• <persName key="amy_lowell">Amy</persName>
• When people are listed in a plural group ("The Aldingtons"), they will need to be added as a separate entry to the Orgography.
• See: TEI

• <placeName key="Chicago">Chicago</placeName>
• See: TEI

• See: TEI

• Journals:
  • <title key="xyzJournal" level= "j">_XYZ Journal_</title>
• Monographs:
  • <title key="xyzMonograph" level= "m">_XYZ Monograph_</title>
• Poems:
  • <title key="xyzPoem" level="a">"XYZ Poem"</title>
• See: TEI

• Publishers will be listed in the Orgography. Therefore, they should be tagged as follows:
  • <orgName key="macmillan">Macmillan</orgName>

• Change any XML special characters to designated XML entities (ie. & becomes &). For special characters, use the HTML Entity codes preceded by “&#” and followed by a semicolon “;”. For example, to render an en dash (HTML Entity Code 8211), you would enter “–”. Here’s a list of HTML Entity Codes: https://www.html.am/reference/html-special-characters.cfm - Use column titled: HTML Entity Number.
• See: TEI

• Project-specific themes, keywords, and subjects should be noted and tagged for each letter within the header under <editorialDecl>.
• These themes will be determined by the editor, and can be retrieved from the ALLP Header Metadata Spreadsheet.
• Themes listed in the header should be tagged as follows:
  • <rs key="ww1" type="theme">WWI</rs>
• See: TEI

• To mark a financial transaction referenced or requested within a letter, use the following:
  • I'm sending you <measure type="currency" num="15">$15</measure>
• See: TEI