The TEI is a community standard and is strongly guided by the needs and interests of its users. There are a number of ways for users—both TEI members and non-members—to contribute to the Guidelines and participate in their development and dissemination.

Feature requests and bug reports

The TEI conducts the active development of the TEI Guidelines at its SourceForge site, which includes forms for submitting feature requests and for reporting bugs or errors in the Guidelines. If you identify an area where the TEI needs further development, we welcome your suggestions; these may also be made more informally on the TEI-L discussion list.

Participation in workgroups

The TEI develops new areas of the TEI Guidelines by establishing workgroups, which are commissioned by the TEI Council and typically focus on a specific topic or textual feature. Workgroups are composed of experts in the field in question, and meet at intervals (in person or via conference calls) to discuss encoding approaches and write documentation until the commissioned module is complete. Anyone with the requisite expertise and TEI knowledge may be selected to participate in a workgroup.

Participation in the TEI Board and Council

The governance and technical oversight of the TEI Consortium are conducted by the TEI Board and TEI Council. With some exceptions, TEI Board and Council members are elected by the TEI membership at the annual TEI elections. A call for nominations is issued each summer and self-nominations are welcomed.

Participation in the TEI Special Interest Groups

The TEI SIGs are self-organizing groups focused on specific topics of interest to the TEI community. In some cases they may form around a particular encoding area and may develop ideas for further development of the Guidelines.

Participation in the TEI-L discussion list

The TEI-L discussion list is the broadest and easiest way to participate in the development of the Guidelines. In addition to general discussion of encoding issues, at intervals the Council or editors may post requests for suggestions or feedback on specific aspects of the Guidelines. Participation is warmly welcomed from novices and experts alike.

Participation in the TEI Wiki

The wiki is a collaborative virtual space where members of the TEI community can provide descriptions of TEI-related tools and projects, develop documentation, share training materials, and exchange information that will help further the goals of the TEI and its users. Anyone may edit the wiki pages after creating a user account (a very simple process).

Training and dissemination

Although the TEI offers documentation and training for use of the TEI Guidelines, the vast majority of training and dissemination of the TEI is performed by the TEI community itself. Materials developed by individuals and projects—project documentation, handouts, lecture notes and slides, and the like—provide an extremely valuable source of information for other TEI users and projects. If you have developed materials which you would like to share, or if you conduct regular TEI training events, they may be listed on the pages maintained by the TEI Education SIG.

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