Category: News

I have just made a new release of my TEI XSLT (version 2.0) stylesheets in the usual places, as part of the build up to the TEI members meeting next month.

It contains another round of corrections to the creation of epub from TEI XML, mostly. This has the side effect of making the normal HTML generation better, as a lot of the work I am doing is making the epub valid.

I am not looking for work [1], but now is the time to report any issues you know about, as I do not expect to do much more on this before the end of the year (fingers crossed).

I remind you of the experimental document conversion service at http://oxgarage.oucs.ox.ac.uk:8080/ege-webclient/ which uses these stylesheets, for your delectation.
 
[1] or maybe I am , depending on the results of the uk govt cuts on Wednesday…

Sebastian Rahtz  sebastian.rahtz@OUCS.OX.AC.UK

The Board of Directors of the TEI is proposing a major restructuring of the governance of the Consortium for approval by the membership at its annual meeting on November 11, 2010 in Zadar, Croatia. The proposed changes to the bylaws can be reviewed at the following URL: http://www.tei-c.org/Board/2010BylawsProposal.xml.

Apart from some minor housekeeping, the focus of the proposed changes involve the composition of the Board of Directors and the relationship of Host Institutions to the Board. Among the major changes:

• An expansion of the elected membership of the Board (i.e. members elected to the Board by the Consortium membership) to 8 from the current 4.
• Restriction of voting membership on the Board to elected directors only.
• Provisions that allow for non-voting representation in Board discussions by all host institutions (currently only four hosts may participate in Board discussions through appointed representatives)

By increasing the number of elected members of the Board and restricting voting privileges solely to this class of Director, the Consortium hopes to allow greater opportunity for community involvement in determining the direction of the organisation and improve its responsiveness to community initiatives and interests. By increasing the opportunities for participation by Host Institutions in Board discussions and removing some structural barriers to participation, the Consortium hopes to expand its base of these very important partners in the Consortium’s activities.

These changes continue the movement of the Consortium from its origins as a research project to a wider community-based and -centred organisation. Additional recent changes the Consortium has made in support of this movement include the introduction of a conference component to its annual meeting and the development of its recent micro-grant programme for Special Interest Group Initiatives.

The proposed changes are subject to approval by the membership at the annual meeting. Ballots, Proxies, and/or elect will be send to the membership in advance

Dear TEI users,

The program committee for TEI MM 2010 in Zadar, Croatia proudly presents the program for this years conference to you. Currently available at http://www.tei-c.org/conftool/sessions.php, you will soon also be able to peruse it from the conference web page.

There might be still some minor adjustments necessary, but we think it will basically stand as it is now.

I would also like to inform you that the program committee together with the local organizers decided to impose a 20% surcharge on all registrations received after Oct. 25, due to the organizational overhead this will cause. So, to ensure a smooth preparation and to avoid unnecessary surcharges, please go to the TEI webshop  at your earliest convenience to register for the conference, if you have not done so yet. There are also a few seats left in the pre-conference workshops, which can be booked from the same page.

Looking forward to see all of you soon,

for the program committee,

Christian Wittern (Chair)

We’re now accepting applications for two advanced TEI seminars on representing contextual information:

• January 17-19, 2011, University of Maryland, hosted by the Maryland Institute for Technology in the Humanities MITH).
  Application deadline is November 1, 2010; participants will be  notified by November 15.
• April 28-30, 2011, Brown University, hosted by the Center for Digital Scholarship.
  Application deadline is February 1, 2011; participants will be  notified by February 15.

**Travel funding is available of up to $500 per participant.**

These seminars assume a basic familiarity with TEI, and provide an opportunity to explore encoding topics in more detail, in a collaborative workshop setting. We will focus on TEI methods for formalizing and representing information about context: named entities such as people and places, thematic analysis and keywords, text classification, glossaries and annotations.

These seminars are part of a series funded by the NEH and conducted by the Brown University Women Writers Project. They are intended to provide a more in-depth look at specific encoding problems and topics for people who are already involved in a text encoding project or are in the process of planning one. Each event will include a mix of presentations, discussion, case studies using participants’ projects, hands-on practice, and individual consultation. The seminars will be strongly project-based: participants will present their projects to the group, discuss specific challenges and encoding strategies, develop encoding specifications and documentation, and create encoded sample documents and templates. We encourage project teams and collaborative groups to apply, although individuals are also welcome. A basic knowledge of the TEI Guidelines and some prior experience with text encoding will be assumed.

For more information and to apply, please visit
http://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/seminars/

Best wishes, Julia

Julia Flanders
Director, Women Writers Project
Brown University

The Text Encoding Initiative requests proposals from institutions interested in becoming Host Institutions. Host Institutions are major supporters of the TEI and provide financial support to the Consortium as well as technical and administrative support and resources on an in-kind basis.

Currently there are five hosts: Brown University and the Universities of Nancy, Oxford, Lethbridge, and Virginia. The terms of Brown, Nancy, Oxford, and Virginia expire at the end of 2010. The term of Lethbridge expires at the end of 2011. All terms are open to renewal. The usual term for a host is four years.

The Board is in the process of proposing a major restructuring of its operations and by-laws (the current by-laws, including those applying to host institutions, can be found here). Under the proposed by-law changes, institutions wishing to become a host must be (or become) Division 0 members of the TEI and agree to donate an annual minimum of $5000 in in-kind services or support activities to the TEI during their term. In exchange, hosts will receive all the benefits of institutional membership, are identified as major supporting institutions on the TEI website, and advise the Board of Directors through participation in its deliberations and meetings. The dues for a Division 0 member in a high wage economy (including most of Western Europe, Japan, and North America) is $5000 per annum. Division 0 membership is discounted for lower wage economies as defined by the World Bank.

Typical in-kind services include development and supply of publicity materials, contributions to TEI financial or membership administration, developing technical infrastructure, hosting work group meetings, and similar activities. The TEI Board of Directors is responsible for ensuring that proposals from potential hosts match the needs of the organisation, are appropriately valued, and cost effective.

As part of this RFP, the TEI is looking for institutions willing to provide specific administrative and technical services but is also very willing to consider proposals from institutions with other strengths that would contribute to the success of the TEI’s mission. Specific services of interest include:

• Development and operation of membership and subscription management software
• Accounting services (accounts receivable, accounts payable, credit card acceptance, banking services, etc.)
• Administrative and technical support for the TEI Council, Special Interest Groups, and other activities
• Technical infrastructure services (e.g. tools to create, validate, and manage distribution of new versions of the TEI Guidelines, tools to customize and make best use of the modular nature of the TEI Guidelines — e.g. Roma, Vesta etc., development of TEI-friendly generic application software tools)
• Web hosting, design, and maintenance
• Secretarial and general administrative support

Beyond these specific services, the TEI is also interested in expressions of interest from prospective hosts in other areas of its mandate, including:

• Education and mentoring
• Tool development
• Development and leadership of special interest groups and other community activities
• Outreach and Recruitment Activities

All of the above are suggestions and the TEI is happy to consider proposals from hosts that combine suggestions or introduce completely new ideas or approaches.

Proposal from potential hosts are due by November 20th, 2010, with successful applicants identified by December 31, 2010.

If your institution is interested in becoming a host of the TEI, please contact the Chair of the TEI or any Board member to discuss ways of fashioning a successful proposal. We are very interested in developing successful proposals from a variety of different institutions.

Grant Call for TEI Special Interest Groups
Proposals Due 22 October 2010
Total Call: $4,500

The TEI Board is delighted to announce a second call for proposals for 2010.
Projects proposed should support the goals of the TEI, the objectives of the SIG, and should be carried out within one year of the date of the award. Any of the nine SIGs that have been approved by Council are eligible to apply:

1. Correspondence
2. Education
3. Libraries
4. Manuscripts
5. Music
6. Ontologies
7.Scholarly Publishing
8. Text and Graphics
9. Tools

Applications will be adjudicated according to the following criteria:

• activity contributes to the promotion and development of the TEI;
• activity is broadly in line with the goals and objectives of the SIG;
• the SIG is judged able to carry out the proposed activity;
• deliverables are realistic and can be accomplished within the budget and time period proposed.

Although there is no upper amount for any individual proposal, applicants should bear in mind that the total amount for this grant call is $4,500. Applications must be submitted by the SIG Chairs (although the grant can be originated by any SIG member). No more than one application per SIG will be accepted.

Proposals should be no longer than three pages (ca. 750 words) and should contain the following information:

1. Name and contact details of proposer
2. SIG name
3. Narrative addressing the criteria above.
4. Amount requested. Please indicate if it would be possible to carry out the activity with less funding, and if so, how that would change the nature of the proposal.
5. Date for final report

Please send submissions to Susan Schreibman susan.schreibman AT gmail.com 

The adjudication committee is comprised of

Brett Barney (Council Rep)
Lou Burnard (Board Rep)
James Cummings (Council Rep)
Susan Schreibman (Board Rep and Chair)

With apologies for inflicting another release so soon, I have put out version 5.40 of my family of TEI-related XSL in all the usual places (Sourceforge, TEI web site, Debian packages). The reason for the immediate release was to correct an error before the next release of oXygen, which includes these stylesheets. As before, nearly all fixes related to ODD and to ePub and Word conversion.

On the plus side, those of you who care about TEI -> OpenOffice will find several errors fixed and features improved (now generates files which OO 3.2 eats without complaint), and those of you at the cutting edge of ODD will definitely want to get the latest fixes to the ODD-processing tools. Thanks to the Music Encoding Initiative people for pushing this forward with their demanding and ambitious spec.

Add in a trial TEI to NLM script from Martin Holmes and what’s not to like, as the cant phrase has it?

Sebastian Rahtz <sebastian.rahtz@OUCS.OX.AC.UK>

Everyone,

This is a note to encourage you to sign up as a reviewer for the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, our recently launched double-blind peer-reviewed journal. The closing date for our first issue is 30 October, and we would like to have a reviewer panel in place that covers the wide range of themes, standards, and disciplines that the TEI covers.

Please consider serving jTEI and the TEI community by providing your expertise and advice.  As a reviewer, you play a significant part in ensuring that submissions to our journal are of the highest academic quality, and your feedback is essential for the authorial and editorial revision of articles.

To register with the journal and for further information, please visit http://journal.tei-c.org/ .

Thank you!

On behalf of the jTEI Editorial Board,

Markus Flatscher
(Technical Editor)

Dear TEI users,

Here is good news for everyone who is considering to submit a late-breaking proposal for the TEI members meeting 2010 in Zadar, Croatia (Nov. 8 to 14):

We now started to accept proposals at the TEI conference management tool. The official closing date for this is September 30th, 2010.

Late-breaking proposals are screened by the Programme Committee and do not undergo the peer-review process of the regular submissions, thus also do not qualify for automatic consideration for the conference volume. More information about the conference is here, the call for late-breaking proposals is here.

There is an excellent slate of workshops on offer for this year’s conference, for which the early bird rate offering discounts of up to 20% is still available. Yet another good reason to consider coming to Zadar this year and catch up with what is going on in the text encoding community!

All the best,

Christian Wittern
Chair, TEI MM2010 International Programme Committee

A new release of the XSLT 2.0 stylesheets for doing things with TEI files was released today, and is live on the TEI web site, Sourceforge and as Debian packages.

Many small changes, relating mosttly to conversion to/from Word OOXML, OpenOffice ODF, and ePub. The OpenOffice conversions are being rewritten for free-standing use, and will probably need more work to get them right.

Sebastian Rahtz  <sebastian.rahtz@OUCS.OX.AC.UK>