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Master Project |
The MASTER Document Type Definition: reference manual2.3 The Manuscript Identifier |
Up: 2 The Manuscript Description Element Previous: 2.2 Phrase-level elements Next: 2.4 The Manuscript Heading
The primary purpose of manuscript description is to provide an unambiguous means of identification for particular manuscript items within a collection. The <msIdentifier> element is provided for this purpose.
| <msIdentifier> | contains the information required to identify a given manuscript or manuscript part uniquely within its holding institution. | |
A full manuscript description may well contain many <msidentifier> elements, since the discussion of one manuscript may well involve the need to refer to others. For that reason, the Master DTD permits the <msidentifier> element to appear anywhere within any paragraph of the description. There is however one place where this element is mandatory, and has a special significance: it must be given as the very first component of a <msDescription>, in which place it identifies the manuscript being described.
A manuscript identifier typically has two parts, the first being its catalogued location, and the second the name used for it within that location. The location may be specified as a collection, located within a repository, forming part of an institution whose primary geographic location is within a city, itself located within a region or country, or both. A manuscript may have alternative identifiers additional to the one currently used, including informal names or old shelfmarks which are retained even after they have been officially superceded.
The `catalogued location' of a manuscript is the place of ownership. A manuscript's exact physical location may occasionally be different: for example, at Cambridge University, manuscripts owned by different colleges may be physically located within the Cambridge University Library. In such cases, the college location should be specified in the manuscript identifier. Similarly, a holding institution may wish to specify additional and more precise physical location information within the <adminInfo> element discussed in section 2.8.1 Administrative Information below.
The following elements are available within <msIdentifier> to identify the physical location of a manuscript:
| <country> | contains the name of a geo-political unit larger than or administratively superior to a <region> (standard TEI element) | |
| <region> | contains the name of a smaller geo-political unit, intermediate between <country> and <settlement> (standard TEI element) | |
| <settlement> | contains the name of the smallest component of a placename expressed as a hierarchy of geo-political or administrative units (standard TEI element) | |
| <institution> | contains the name of an organization, such as a University or Library, within which a manuscript repository is located. | |
| <repository> | contains the name of a repository (usually a distinct physical building) within which manuscripts are stored, forming part of an institution. | |
| <collection> | contains the name of a collection of manuscripts, not necessarily located within a single repository. | |
These elements are all structurally equivalent to the standard TEI <name> element with an appropriate value for its type attribute; however the use of this `syntactic sugar' enables the model for <msIdentifier> to be constrained rather more tightly than would otherwise be possible. Specifically, only one of each of the elements listed above may appear within the <msIdentifier>; if present, they must appear in the order given; and all of them except for the <settlement> and <repository> element may be omitted.
These elements are all also members of the standard TEI attribute class names, which means that they can all bear attributes such as reg to supply a regularized form of a name, or key to specify a database or similar unique key for it, as further documented in the TEI description of this class..
The following elements are used within <msIdentifier> to provide the identification used for the manuscript:
| <idno> | supplies the string of abbreviations and numbers, usually referred to as the `call number', `shelfmark', `accession number', etc., that is used to identify the item (standard TEI element) | |||||||||
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| <altName> | contains any form of alternative identifier used for a manuscript, such as a former catalogue number, ocellus nominum, or nickname. | |||||||||
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Major manuscript repositories will usually have a preferred form of citation for manuscript shelfmarks, including strict rules about punctuation, spacing, abbreviation, etc., which should be adhered to. Where such a format also contains information which might additionally be supplied as a distinct subcomponent of the <msIdentifier>, for example a collection or repository name, the cataloguer must decide whether or not to include this information in both locations; it is required within <idno>. The type attribute on the <idno> element may be used to indicate when the format of the <idno> element is of some kind other than that implied by the repository name
<msIdentifier> <settlement>San Marino</settlement> <repository>Huntington Library</repository> <idno>MS.El.26.C.9</idno> </msIdentifier>
<msIdentifier> <settlement>Arezzo</settlement> <repository>Biblioteca comunale</repository> <idno>MS 52</idno> </msIdentifier>
Here is a somewhat over explicit example:
<msIdentifier> <country>USA</country> <region>California</region> <settlement>San Marino</settlement> <institution>The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens</institution> <repository>Huntington Library</repository> <idno>MS.El.26.C.9</idno> <altName type="nick">The Ellesmere Chaucer</altName> </msIdentifier>
Note, in the preceding example, that the name of the collection (Rawlinson) is not explicitly tagged, since it is implicit in the standard form of the manuscript shelf mark. In the following example, however, a collection name is useful:
<!-- to be supplied -->
Any number of <altName> elements may also be used to supply alternative names used for the manuscript, as in the following example:
<msIdentifier> <settlement>Rossano</settlement> <repository lang="IT">Biblioteca arcivescovile</repository> <altName lang="LAT" type="nick">Codex Rossanensis</altName> <altName lang="LAT" type="nick">Codex aureus</altName> <altName lang="LAT" type="nick">Codex purpureus</altName> <altName lang="ENG" type="gloss">The Rossano Gospels</altName> </msIdentifier>
Note the use of the globally available lang attribute above to specify the language in which the content of an element is supplied. This is a standard TEI facility, which the cataloguer may find useful in certain environments (for example, when compiling a single catalogue from a variety of originally different sources), and which may safely be ignored in others.
The <msIdentifier> element and its constituents are formally defined as follows:
Up: 2 The Manuscript Description Element Previous: 2.2 Phrase-level elements Next: 2.4 The Manuscript Heading
(revised 21 Jun 01) Edited by Lou Burnard for the MASTER Work Group.
Copyright TEI Consortium 2001