The msdescription module
This chapter is based on the work of the European MASTER (Manuscript Access
through Standards for Electronic Records) project, funded by the European Union
from January 1999 to June 2001, and led by Peter Robinson, then at the Centre
for Technology and the Arts at De Montfort University, Leicester (UK).
Significant input also came from a TEI Workgroup headed by Consuelo W. Dutschke
of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University (USA) and Ambrogio
Piazzoni of the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (IT) during 1998-2000.
defines a special purpose element which can be used to provide detailed
descriptive information about handwritten primary sources and other text-bearing objects.
Although originally developed to meet the needs of cataloguers and scholars working with medieval
manuscripts in the European tradition, the scheme presented here is general
enough that it can also be extended to other traditions and materials, and is
potentially useful for any kind of text-bearing artefact. Where the textuality of
an object is not the primary concern, encoders may wish to use the object
element which provides a very similar system of description (see .
The scheme described here is also intended to accommodate the needs of many
different classes of encoders. On the one hand, encoders may be engaged in
retrospective conversion of existing detailed descriptions and
catalogues into machine tractable form; on the other, they may be engaged in
cataloguing ex nihilo, that is, creating new detailed
descriptions for materials never before catalogued. Some may be primarily
concerned to represent accurately the description itself, as opposed to the
ideas and interpretations the description represents; others may have entirely
opposite priorities. At one extreme, a project may simply wish to capture an
existing catalogue in a form that can be displayed on the Web, and which can be
searched for literal strings, or for such features such as titles, authors and
dates; at the other, a project may wish to create, in highly structured and
encoded form, a detailed database of information about the physical
characteristics, history, interpretation, etc. of the material, able to support
practitioners of quantitative codicology as well as librarians.
To cater for this diversity, here as elsewhere, these Guidelines propose a
flexible strategy, in which encoders must choose for themselves the approach
appropriate to their needs, and are provided with a choice of encoding
mechanisms to support those differing degrees.
The Manuscript Description Element
The msDesc element will normally appear within the
sourceDesc element of the header of a TEI-conformant document, where
the document being encoded is a digital representation of some manuscript
original, whether as an encoded transcription, as a collection of digital images
(as described in ), or as some combination of the two.
However, in cases where the document being encoded is essentially a collection
of manuscript descriptions, the msDesc element may be used in the same
way as the bibliographic elements (bibl, biblFull, and
biblStruct) making up the TEI element class model.biblLike.
These typically appear within the listBibl
element.
The msDesc element has the following components, which provide more
detailed information under a number of headings. Each of these component
elements is further described in the remainder of this chapter.
The first of these components, msIdentifier, is the only one which
is mandatory; it is described in more detail in below. It
is followed optionally by one or more head elements, each holding a
brief heading (see ), and then either one or more
paragraphs, marked up as a series of p elements, or at most
one of each of the specialized elements msContents (),
physDesc (), history (),
and additional (). These elements are all
optional, and if used they may appear at most once in a given
msDesc, in any order. Finally,
in the case of a composite manuscript (a manuscript composed of several
codicological units) or a fragmented manuscript (a manuscript whose parts are now
dispersed and kept at different places), a full description may also contain one or more
msPart () elements and msFrag ()
elements, respectively.
To demonstrate the use of this module, consider the following sample
manuscript description, chosen more or less at random from the Bodleian
Library's
Summary catalogue ()
Entry for Bodleian MS. Add. A. 61 in Madan et al. 1895-1953
The simplest way of digitizing this catalogue entry would simply be to key in
the text, tagging the relevant parts of it which make up the mandatory
msIdentifier element, as follows:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Add. A. 6128843
In Latin, on parchment: written in more than one hand of the 13th cent. in
England: 7¼ x 5⅜ in., i + 55 leaves, in double columns: with a few coloured
capitals.
'Hic incipit Bruitus Anglie,' the De origine et gestis Regum Angliae of
Geoffrey of Monmouth (Galfridus Monumetensis: beg. 'Cum mecum multa & de
multis.'
On fol. 54v very faint is 'Iste liber est fratris guillelmi de buria de ...
Roberti ordinis fratrum Pred[icatorum],' 14th cent. (?): 'hanauilla' is written
at the foot of the page (15th cent.). Bought from the rev. W. D. Macray on March
17, 1863, for £1 10s.
With a suitable stylesheet, this encoding would be as readable as the original;
it would not, however, be very useful for search purposes since only shelfmarks
and other identifiers are distinguished. To improve on this, one might wrap the
paragraphs in the appropriate special-purpose first-child-level elements of
msDesc and add some of the additional phrase-level elements available
when this module is in use:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Add. A. 6128843
Hic incipit Bruitus Anglie, the
De origine et gestis
Regum Angliae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (Galfridus Monumetensis): beg.
Cum mecum multa & de multis. In Latin.
Parchment: written in
more than one hand: 7¼ x 5⅜ in., i + 55 leaves, in double columns:
with a few coloured capitals.
Written in England in the 13th
cent. On fol. 54v very faint is Iste liber est fratris
guillelmi de buria de ... Roberti ordinis fratrum Pred[icatorum], 14th
cent. (?): hanauilla is written at the foot of the page (15th
cent.). Bought from the rev. W. D. Macray on March 17, 1863, for £1 10s.
Note that in this version the text has been slightly reorganized, but no actual
rewriting has been necessary. The encoding now allows the user to search for
such features as title, material, and date and place of origin; it is also
possible to distinguish quoted material from descriptive passages and to search
within descriptions relating to a particular topic (for example, history as
distinct from material).
This process could be continued further, restructuring the whole entry so as
to take full advantage of many more of the encoding possibilities provided by
the module described in this chapter:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Add. A. 6128843Geoffrey of MonmouthGalfridus MonumetensisDe origine et gestis Regum AngliaeHic incipit Bruitus AnglieCum mecum multa & de multisLatin
Parchment.
i + 55 leaves 7¼5⅜
In double columns.
Written in more than one hand.
With a few coloured capitals.
Written in England in the 13th cent.
On fol. 54v very faint is Iste liber est fratris
guillelmi de buria de Roberti ordinis fratrum
Predicatorum, 14th cent. (?): hanauilla is
written at the foot of the page (15th cent.).
Bought from the rev. W. D. Macray on March 17, 1863, for £1 10s.
In the remainder of this chapter we discuss all of the encoding features
demonstrated above, together with many other related matters.
Phrase-level Elements
When the msdescription module is in use, several
extra elements are added to the phrase level class, and thus become available
within paragraphs and elsewhere in the document. These elements are listed below
in alphabetical order:
Within a manuscript description, many other standard TEI phrase level
elements are available, notably those described in the Core module (). Additional elements of particular relevance to manuscript
description, such as those for names and dates, may also be made available by
including the relevant module in one's schema.
Origination
The following elements may be used to provide information about the origins
of any aspect of a manuscript:
The origDate and origPlace elements are specialized forms
of the existing date and name elements respectively, used to
indicate specifically the date and place of origin of a manuscript or manuscript
part. Such information would normally be encoded within the history
element, discussed in section . origDate and
origPlace can also be used to identify the place or date of origin of
any aspect of the manuscript, such as its decoration or binding, when these are
not of the same date or from the same location as rest of the manuscript. Both
these elements are members of the att.editLike
class, from which they inherit many attributes.
The origDate element is a member of the att.datable class, and may thus also carry additional attributes giving
normalized values for the associated dating.
Material and Object Type
The material element can be used to tag any specific term used for
the physical material of which a manuscript (or binding, seal, etc.) is
composed. The objectType element may be used to tag any term specifying
the type of object or manuscript upon with the text is written.
These elements may appear wherever a term regarded as significant by the
encoder occurs, as in the following examples:
Brown calfskin, previously with two clasps.
Parchmentcodex with half goat-leather
binding.
Watermarks and Stamps
Two further elements are provided to mark up other decorative features
characteristic of manuscript leaves and bindings:
These elements may appear wherever a term regarded as significant by the
encoder occurs. The watermark element is most likely to be of use
within the support element discussed in
below. We give a simple example here:
Rag
paper with anchor watermark
The stamp element will typically appear when text from the source is
being transcribed, for example within a rubric in the following case:
Apologyticu TTVLLIANI AC IGNORATIA IN XPO IHV
SI NON LICET
NOBIS RO
manii imperii Bodleian stamp
It may also appear as part of the detailed description of a binding:
Modern calf recasing with original armorial stamp with legend
Ex Bibliotheca J. Richard
D.M.
If, as here, any text contained by a stamp is included in its description it
should be clearly distinguished from that description. The element
mentioned may be used for this purpose, as shown above.
Dimensions
The dimensions element can be used to specify the size of some
aspect of the manuscript, and thus may be thought of as a specialized form of
the existing TEI measure element.
The dimensions element will normally occur within the element
describing the particular feature or aspect of a manuscript whose dimensions are
being given; thus the size of the leaves would be specified within the
support or extent element (part of the physDesc
element discussed in ), while the dimensions of other
specific parts of a manuscript, such as accompanying materials, binding, etc.,
would be given in other parts of the description, as appropriate.
The following elements are available within the dimensions element:
These elements, as well as dimensions itself, are all members of the
att.dimensions class, which also inherits attributes
from the att.ranging class. They all thus carry the
following attributes:
Attributes scope, min, and max are used only
when the measurement applies to several items, for example the size of all
leaves in a manuscript; attributes atLeast and atMost are
used when the measurement applies to a single item, for example the size of a
specific codex, but has had to be estimated. Attribute quantity is
used when the measurement can be given exactly, and applies to a single item;
this is the usual situation. In this case, the units in which dimensions are
measured may be specified using the unit attribute, the value of
which will normally be taken from a closed set of values appropriate to the
project, using standard units of measurement wherever possible, such as
cm, mm, in, line, char.
If however the only data available for the measurement uses some other unit, or
it is preferred to normalize it in some other way, then it may be supplied as a
string value by means of the extent attribute.
In the simplest case, only the extent attribute may be supplied:
six
cubits
More usually, the measurement will be normalized into a value and an
appropriate SI unit:
six cubits
Where the exact value is uncertain, the attributes atLeast and
atMost may be used to indicate the upper and lower bounds of an
estimated value:
six cubits
It is often convenient to supply a measurement which applies to a number of
discrete observations: for example, the number of ruled lines on the pages of a
manuscript (which may not all be the same), or the diameter of an object like a
bell, which will differ depending where it is measured. In such cases, the
scope attribute may be used to specify the observations for which
this measurement is applicable:
This indicates that most pages have at least 20 lines. The attributes
min and max can also be used to specify the possible range
of values: for example, to show that all pages have between 12 and 30 lines:
The dimensions element may be repeated as often as necessary, with
appropriate attribute values to indicate the nature and scope of the measurement
concerned. For example, in the following case the leaf size and ruled space of
the leaves of the manuscript are specified:
This indicates that for most leaves of the manuscript being described the ruled
space is 90 mm high and 48 mm wide, while the leaves throughout are between 157
and 160 mm in height and 105 mm in width.
The dim element is provided for cases where some measurement other
than height, width, or depth is required. Its type attribute is used
to indicate the type of measurement involved:
The order in which components of the dimensions element may be
supplied is not constrained.
References to Locations within a Manuscript
The locus and its grouping element locusGrp element are
specialized forms of the ref element, used to indicate a location, or
sequence of locations, within a manuscript.
The locus element is used to reference a single location within a
manuscript, typically to specify the location occupied by the element within
which it appears. If, for example, it is used as the first component of an
msItem or msItemStruct element, or of any of the more specific
elements appearing within one (see further section below)
then it is understood to specify the location (or locations) of that item within
the manuscript being described.
Identifying a Location
A locus element can be used to identify any reference to one or more
folios within a manuscript, wherever such a reference is appropriate. Locations
are conventionally specified as a sequence of folio or page numbers, but may
also be a discontinuous list, or a combination of the two. This specification
should be given as the content of the locus element, using the
conventions appropriate to the individual scholar or holding institution, as in
the following example:
ff. 1-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
A normalized form of the location can also be supplied, using special purpose
attributes on the locus element, as in the following revision of the
above example:
ff. 1-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
When the item concerned occupies a discontinuous sequence of pages, this may
simply be indicated in the body of the locus element:
ff. 1-12v, 18-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
Alternatively, if it is desired to indicate normalized values for each part of
the sequence, a sequence of locus elements can be supplied, grouped
within the locusGrp element:
ff. 1-12vff. 18-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
If an existing catalogue is being transcribed and it is desirable to retain formatting of the reference (e.g. superscript or italic text) then the hi element may be used. If encoding multiple semantic divisions in a single location reference then a nested locus may be used to separate or annotate these.
Finally, the content of the locus element may be omitted if a
formatting application can construct it automatically from the values of the
from and to attributes:
Apocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
Linking a Location to a Transcription or an Image
The locus attribute can also be used to associate a location within
a manuscript with facsimile images of that location, using the facs
attribute, or with a transcription of the text occurring at that location. The
former association is effected by means of the facs attribute; the
latter by means of the target attribute.
The facs is available only when the transcr module described in chapter is included in
a schema. It associates a locus element with one or more digitized
images, as in the following example:
fols. 8v-10vBirds Praise of LoveIMEV1506
Here, the facs attribute uses a URI reference to point directly to
images of the relevant pages. This method may be found cumbersome when many
images are to be associated with a single location. It is of most use when
specific pages are referenced within a description, as in the following example:
Several of the miniatures in this section have been damaged and overpainted
at a later date (e.g. the figure of Christ on fol. 33r; the face of the
Shepherdess on fol.
59v, etc.).
For further discussion of the facs attribute, see section .
Where a transcription of the relevant pages is available, this may be
associated with the locus element using its target
attribute, as in the following example:
ff. 1r-2rBen JonsonOde to himself An Ode
to him selfe.Com leaue the loathed stageAnd see his chariot triumph ore his wayne.Beal, Index 1450-1625, JnB 380
When (as in this example) a sequence of elements is to be supplied as target
value, it may be given explicitly as above, or using the xPointer range() syntax
defined at . Note however that support for this pointer
mechanism is not widespread in current XML processing systems.
The target attribute should only be used to point to elements that
contain or indicate a transcription of the locus being described. To associate a
locus element with a page image or other comparable representation, the
global facs attribute should be used instead.
Using Multiple Location Schemes
Where a manuscript contains more than one foliation, the scheme
attribute may be used to distinguish them. For example, MS 65 Corpus Christi
College, Cambridge contains two fly leaves bearing music. These leaves have
modern foliation 135 and 136 respectively, but are also marked with an older
foliation. This may be preserved in an encoding such as the following:
XCIII135
Here the scheme attribute points to a foliation element
providing more details about the scheme used, as further discussed in below.
Where discontinuous sequences are identified within two different foliations,
the scheme attribute should be supplied on the locusGrp
element in preference, as in the following:
XCIIICC-CCII135197-204
Names of Persons, Places, and Organizations
The standard TEI element name may be used to identify names of any
kind occurring within a description: As further discussed in , this element is a
member of the class att.canonical, from which it
inherits the following attributes:
Here are some examples of the use of the name element:
Thomas HoccleveVillingaholtVetus Latina InstitutOccleve
Note that the name element is defined as providing information about
a name, not the person, place, or organization to which that name
refers. In the last example above, the ref attribute is used to
associate the name with a more detailed description of the person named. This is
provided by means of the person element, which becomes available when
the namesdates module described in chapter is included in a schema. An element such as the following might
then be used to provide detailed information about the person indicated by the
name:
HoccleveThomaspoet
Note that an instance of
the person element must be provided for each distinct ref
value specified. For example, in the case above, the value HOC001
must be found as the xml:id attribute of some person
element; the same value will be used as the ref attribute of every
reference to Hoccleve in the document (however spelled), but there will only be
one person element with this identifier.
Alternatively, the key attribute may be used to supply a unique
identifying code for the person referenced by the name independently of both the
existence of a person element and the use of the standard URI reference
mechanism. If, for example, a project maintains as its authority file some
non-digital resource, or uses a database which cannot readily be integrated with
other digital resources for this purpose, the unique codes used by such
offline resources may be used as values for the
key attribute. Although such practices clearly reduce the
interchangeability of the resulting encoded texts, they may be judged more
convenient or practical in certain situations. As explained in , interchange is improved by use of tag URIs in ref
instead of key.
All the person elements referenced by a particular
document set should be collected together within a listPerson
element, located in a standOff element.
This functions as a kind of prosopography for all the people
referenced by the set of manuscripts being described, in much the same
way as a listBibl element may be used to hold bibliographic
information for all the works referenced.
When the namesdates module described in chapter
is included in a schema, similar mechanisms are used to
maintain and reference canonical lists of places or organizations, as further
discussed in sections and
respectively.
Catchwords, Signatures, Secundo Folio
The catchwords element is used to describe one method by which
correct ordering of the quires of a codex is ensured. Typically, this takes the
form of a word or phrase written in the lower margin of the last leaf verso of a
gathering, which provides a preview of the first recto leaf of the successive
gathering. This may be a simple phrase such as the following:
Quires signed on the
last leaf verso in roman numerals.
Alternatively, it may contain more details:
Vertical catchwords in the hand of the scribe placed along the inner
bounding line, reading from top to bottom.
The Signatures element is used, in a similar way, to
describe a similar system in which quires or leaves are marked progressively in
order to facilitate arrangement during binding. For example:
At the bottom of the
first four leaves of quires 1-14 are the remains of a series of quire signatures
a-o plus roman figures in a cursive hand of the fourteenth century.
The signatures element can be used for either leaf signatures, or a
combination of quire and leaf signatures, whether the marking is alphabetic,
alphanumeric, or some ad hoc system, as in the following more complex example:
Quire and leaf
signatures in letters, [b]-v, and roman numerals; those in quires 10 (1) and 17
(s) in red ink and different from others; every third quire also signed with red
crayon in arabic numerals in the centre lower margin of the first leaf recto:
"2" for quire 4 (f. 19), "3" for quire 7 (f. 43); "4", barely visible, for quire
10 (f. 65), "5", in a later hand, for quire 13 (f. 89), "6", in a later hand,
for quire 16 (f. 113).
The secFol element (for secundo folio) is used
to record an identifying phrase (also called dictio
probatoria) taken from a specific known point in a codex (for example
the first few words on the second leaf). Since these words will differ from one
copy of a text to another, the practice originated in the middle ages of using
them when cataloguing a manuscript in order to distinguish individual copies of
a work in a way which its opening words could not.
(ando-)ssene in una villa
Heraldry
Descriptions of heraldic arms, supporters, devices, and mottos may appear at
various points in the description of a manuscript, usually in the context of
ownership information, binding descriptions, or detailed accounts of
illustrations. A full description may also contain a detailed account of the
heraldic components of a manuscript independently considered. Frequently,
however, heraldic descriptions will be cited as short phrases within other parts
of the record. The phrase level element heraldry is provided to allow
such phrases to be marked for further analysis, as in the following examples:
Ownership stamp (xvii cent.) on i recto with the arms A bull
passant within a bordure bezanty, in chief a crescent for difference
[Cole], crest, and the legend Cole Deum.
A c. 8r fregio su due lati, stemma e imprese medicee
racchiudono l'inizio dell'epistolario di Paolino.
The Manuscript Identifier
The msIdentifier element is intended to provide an unambiguous means
of uniquely identifying a particular manuscript. This may be done in a
structured way, by providing information about the holding institution and the
call number, shelfmark, or other identifier used to indicate its location within
that institution. Alternatively, or in addition, a manuscript may be identified
simply by a commonly used name.
A manuscript's actual physical location may occasionally be different from
its place of ownership; at Cambridge University, for example, manuscripts owned
by various colleges are kept in the central University Library. Normally, it is
the ownership of the manuscript which should be specified in the manuscript
identifier, while additional or more precise information on the physical
location of the manuscript can be given within the adminInfo element,
discussed in section below.
The following elements are available within msIdentifier to identify
the holding institution:
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 and they must, if
present, appear in the order given.
Like name, these elements are all also members of the attribute
class att.canonical, and thus can use the attributes
key or ref to reference a single standardized source of
information about the entity named.
The following elements are used within msIdentifier to provide
different ways of identifying the manuscript within its holding institution:
Major manuscript repositories will usually have a preferred form of citation
for manuscript shelfmarks, including 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 name, a
decision must be taken as to whether to use the more specific element, or to
include such information within the idno element. For example, the
manuscript formally identified as El 26 C 9 forms a part of the Ellesmere
(El) collection. Either of the following encodings is therefore feasible:
USACaliforniaSan MarinoHuntington LibraryEl26 C 9The Ellesmere ChaucerUSACaliforniaSan MarinoHuntington LibraryEl 26 C 9The Ellesmere Chaucer
In the former example, the preferred form of the identifier can be retrieved
by prefixing the content of the idno element with that of the
collection element, while in the latter it is given explicitly. The
advantage of the former is that it simplifies accurate retrieval of all
manuscripts from a given collection; the disadvantage is that encoded
abbreviations of this kind may not be as immediately comprehensible. Care should
be taken to avoid redundancy: for example
ElEl 26 C 9
would clearly be inappropriate. Equally clearly,
EllesmereEl 26 C 9
might be considered helpful in some circumstances (if, for example, some of the
items in the Ellesmere collection had shelfmarks which did not begin El).
In some cases the shelfmark may contain no information about the collection;
in other cases, the item may be regarded as belonging to more than one
collection. The collection element may be added, and repeated as often
as necessary to cater for such situations:
HungaryBudapest Bibliothèque de l'Académie des Sciences de Hongrie Oriental CollectionSandor Kégl BequestMS 1265
USANew JerseyPrincetonPrinceton University LibraryScheide LibraryMS 71Blickling Homiliary
Note in the latter case the use of the msName element to provide a
common name other than the shelfmark by which a manuscript is known. Where a
manuscript has several such names, more than one of these elements may be used,
as in the following example:
DanmarkKøbenhavnDet Arnamagnæanske InstitutAM 45 fol.Codex FrisianusFríssbók
Here the globally available xml:lang attribute has been used to
specify the language of the alternative names.
In very rare cases a repository may have only one manuscript (or only one of
any significance), which will have no shelfmark as such but will be known by a
particular name or names. In such circumstances, the idno element may
be omitted, and the manuscript identified by the name or names used for it,
using one or more msName elements, as in the following example:
RossanoBiblioteca arcivescovileCodex RossanensisCodex purpureusThe Rossano Gospels
If a manuscript name contains a name or referencing string that it is useful to
annotate (e.g. by referring to an authority list) then name or rs
may be used for this purpose.
Where manuscripts have moved from one institution to another, or even within
the same institution, they may have identifiers additional to the ones currently
used, such as former shelfmarks, which are sometimes retained even after they
have been officially superseded. In such cases it may be useful to supply an
alternative identifier, with a detailed structure similar to that of the
msIdentifier itself. The following example shows a manuscript which had
shelfmark II-M-5 in the collection of the Duque de Osuna, but which
now has the shelfmark MS 10237 in the National Library in Madrid:
MadridBiblioteca NacionalMS 10237AndaluciaOsunaDuque de OsunaII-M-5
Normally, such information would be dealt with under history, except
in cases where a manuscript is likely still to be referred to or known by its
former identifier. For example, an institution may have changed its call number
system but still wish to retain a record of the earlier number, perhaps because
the manuscript concerned is frequently cited in print under its previous number:
BerkeleyUniversity of CaliforniaBancroft LibraryUCB 162MS BS1145 I8
Where (as in this example) no repository is specified for the
altIdentifier, it is assumed to be the same as that of the parent
msIdentifier. Where the holding institution has only one preferred form
of citation but wishes to retain the other for internal administrative purposes,
the secondary could be given within altIdentifier with an appropriate
value on the type attribute:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Bodley 4062297
It might, however, be preferable to include such information within the
adminInfo element discussed in section
below.
Cases of such changed or alternative identifiers should be clearly
distinguished from cases of fragmented () manuscripts, that is to say manuscripts which although physically disjoint
are nevertheless generally treated as single units.
As mentioned above, the smallest possible description is one that contains
only the element msIdentifier; good practice in all but exceptional
circumstances requires the presence within it of the three sub-elements
settlement, repository, and idno, since they provide
what is, by common consent, the minimum amount of information necessary to
identify a manuscript.
The Manuscript Heading
Historically, the briefest possible meaningful description of a manuscript
consists of no more than a title, e.g. Polychronicon.
This will often have been enough to identify a manuscript in a small collection
because the identity of the author is implicit. Where a title does not imply the
author, and is thus insufficient to identify the main text of a manuscript, the
author should be stated explicitly (e.g. Augustinus,
Sermones or Cicero, Letters). Many
inventories of manuscripts consist of no more than an author and title, with
some form of copy-specific identifier, such as a shelfmark or secundo
folio reference (e.g. Arch. B. 3. 2: Evangelium Matthei
cum glossa, 126. Isidori Originum libri octo,
Biblia Hieronimi, 2o fo. opus est); information on date
and place of writing will sometimes also be included. The standard TEI element
head element can be used to provide a brief description of this kind. In this way the cataloguer or scholar can supply in one place a
minimum of essential information, such as might be displayed or printed as the
heading of a full description. For example:
Marsilius de Inghen, Abbreviata phisicorum Aristotelis; Italy,
1463.
Any phrase-level elements, such as title, name,
date, or the specialized elements origPlace and
origDate, can also be used within a head element, but it
should be remembered that the head element is intended principally to
contain a heading. More structured information concerning the contents, physical
form, or history of the manuscript should be given within the specialized
elements described below, msContents, physDesc,
history, etc. However, in simple cases, the p element may also
be used to supply an unstructured collection of such information, as in the
example given above ().
Intellectual Content
The msContents element is used to describe the intellectual content
of a manuscript or manuscript part. It comprises either a series of
informal prose paragraphs or a series of msItem or
msItemStruct elements, each of which provides a more detailed
description of a single item contained within the manuscript. These may be
prefaced, if desired, by a summary element, which is especially useful
where one wishes to provide an overview of a manuscript's contents and describe
only some of the items in detail.
In the simplest case, only a brief description may be provided, as in the
following examples:
A collection of Lollard sermons
Atlas of the world from Western Europe and Africa to Indochina, containing 27
maps and 26 tables
Biblia sacra: Antiguo y Nuevo Testamento, con prefacios, prólogos y
argumentos de san Jerónimo y de otros. Interpretaciones de los nombres
hebreos.
This description may of course be expanded to include any of the TEI elements
generally available within a p element, such as title,
bibl, or list. More usually, however, each individual work
within a manuscript will be given its own description, using the msItem
or msItemStruct element described in the next section, as in the
following example:
fols. 5r -7vAn ABCIMEV239fols. 7v -8vLenvoy de Chaucer a ScoganIMEV3747fol. 8vTruthIMEV809fols. 8v-10vBirds Praise of LoveIMEV1506fols. 10v -11vDe amico ad amicamResponcioIMEV16 & 19fols. 14r-126vTroilus and CriseydeBk. 1:71-Bk. 5:1701, with additional losses due to mutilation
throughout
The summary element may be used in conjunction with one or more
msItem elements if it is desired to provide both a general summary of
the contents of a manuscript and more detail about some or all of the individual
items within it. It may not however be used within an individual msItem
element.
A collection of Lollard sermonsfol. 4r-8r3rd Sunday Before Lentfol. 9r-16vSexagesima
The msItem and msItemStruct Elements
Each discrete item in a manuscript or manuscript part can be described within
a distinct msItem or msItemStruct element, and may be
classified using the class attribute.
These are the possible component elements of msItem and
msItemStruct.
In addition, an msItemStruct may contain nested msItemStruct
elements, just as an msItem may contain nested msItem
elements.
The main difference between msItem and msItemStruct is that
in the former, the order and number of child elements is not constrained; any
element, in other words, may be given in any order, and repeated as often as is
judged necessary. In the latter, however, the sub-elements, if used, must be
given in the order specified above and only some of them may be repeated;
specifically, rubric, finalRubric. incipit,
textLang and explicit can appear only once.
While neither msItem nor msItemStruct may contain untagged
running text, both permit an unstructured description to be provided in the form
of one or more paragraphs of text. They differ in this respect also: if
paragraphs are supplied as the content of an msItem, then none of the
other component elements listed above is permitted; in the msItemStruct
case, however, paragraphs may appear anywhere as an alternative to any of the
component elements listed above.
As noted above, both msItem and msItemStruct elements may
also nest, where a number of separate items in a manuscript are grouped under a
single title or rubric, as is the case, for example, with a work like
The
Canterbury Tales.
The elements msContents, msItem, msItemStruct,
incipit, and explicit are all members of the class att.msExcerpt from which they inherit the
defective attribute. This attribute can be used for example with collections of
fragments, where each fragment is given as a separate msItem and the
first and last words of each fragment are transcribed as defective incipits and
explicits, as in the following example, a manuscript containing four fragments
of a single work:
1r-9vKnýtlinga saga1r:1-2v:30danna a englandien meðan haraldr hein hafði
konungr vit
yfir danmork
The elements ex, am, and expan used in the above
example are further discussed in section ; they are
available only when the transcr module defined by
that chapter is selected. Similarly, the g element used in this example
to represent the abbreviation mark is defined by the gaiji module documented in chapter .
Authors and Titles
When used within a manuscript description, the title element should
be used to supply a regularized form of the item's title, as distinct from any
rubric quoted from the manuscript. If the item concerned has a standardized
distinctive title, e.g. Roman de la Rose, then this
should be the form given as content of the title element, with the
value of the type attribute given as uniform. If no
uniform title exists for an item, or none has been yet identified, or if one
wishes to provide a general designation of the contents, then a
supplied title can be given, e.g.
missal, in which case the type attribute on
the title should be given the value supplied.
Similarly, if used within a manuscript description, the author
element should always contain the normalized form of an author's name,
irrespective of how (or whether) this form of the name is cited in the
manuscript. If it is desired to retain the form of the author's name as given in
the manuscript, this may be tagged as a distinct name element, within
the text at the point where it occurs.
Note that the key attribute can also be used, as on names in
general, to specify the identifier of a person element carrying full
details of the person concerned (see further ).
The respStmt element can be used to supply the name and role of a
person other than the author who is responsible for some aspect of the
intellectual content of the manuscript:
Diogenes Laertiusin the translation ofAmbrogio Traversari
The respStmt element can also be used where there is a discrepancy
between the author of an item as given in the manuscript and the accepted
scholarly view, as in the following example:
Sermons on the Epistles and the Gospelshere erroneously attributed toSt. Bonaventura
Note that such attributions of authorship, both correct and incorrect, are
frequently found in the rubric or final rubric (and occasionally also elsewhere
in the text), and can therefore be transcribed and included in the description,
if desired, using the rubric, finalRubric, or quote
elements, as appropriate.
Rubrics, Incipits, Explicits, and Other Quotations from the Text
It is customary in a manuscript description to record the opening and closing
words of a text as well as any headings or colophons it might have, and the
specialized elements rubric, incipit, explicit,
finalRubric, and colophon are available within msItem
for doing so, along with the more general quote, for recording other
bits of the text not covered by these elements. Each of these elements has the
same substructure, containing a mixture of phrase-level elements and plain text.
A locus element can be included within each, in order to specify the
location of the component, as in the following example:
f. 1-223Radulphus FlaviacensisExpositio super Leviticum f. 1r Forte Hervei monachif. 223v Benedictio salis et aquae
In the following example, standard TEI elements for the transcription of
primary sources have been used to mark the expansion of abbreviations and other
features present in the original:
ff. 1r-24vÁgrip af Noregs konunga sǫgumregi oc hann seti hosc heim sem þiohon heveroc þa buit hesta .ij.
annan viþ fé en honom annan til
reiþar
Note here also the use of the defective attribute on
incipit and explicit to indicate that the text begins and ends
defectively.
The xml:lang attribute for colophon, explicit,
incipit, quote, and rubric may always be used to
identify the language of the text quoted, if this is different from the default
language specified by the mainLang attribute on
textLang.
Filiation
The filiation element can be used to provide information on the
relationship between the manuscript and other surviving manuscripts of the same
text, either specifically or in a general way, as in the following example:
118rbEcce morior cum nichil horum ... [Dn 13, 43]. Verba ista
dixit Susanna de illisut bonum comune conservatur.Schneyer 3, 436 (Johannes Contractus OFM)weitere Überl. Uppsala C 181, 35r.
Text Classification
One or more text classification or text-type codes may be specified, either
for the whole of the msContents element, or for one or more of its
constituent msItem elements, using the class attribute as
specified above:
1v-71vJónsbókMagnus med guds miskun Noregs konungurenn uirda þo til fullra aura
The value used for the class attribute in this example points to a
category element with the identifier law, which defines
the classification concerned. Such category elements will typically
appear within a taxonomy element, within the classDecl element
of the TEI header () as in the following example:
LegislationMilitary topics
More than one classification may apply to a single item. Another text,
concerned with legislation about military topics might thus be specified as
follows:
A treatise on Clausewitz
Languages and Writing Systems
The textLang element should be used to provide information about the
languages used within a manuscript item. It may take the form of a simple note,
as in the following example:
Old Church Slavonic, written in Cyrillic script.
Where, for validation and indexing purposes, it is thought convenient to add
keywords identifying the particular languages used, the mainLang
attribute may be used. This attribute takes the same range of values as the
global xml:lang attribute, on which see further . In the following example a manuscript written chiefly in Old Church Slavonic
is described:
Old Church Slavonic
A manuscript item will sometimes contain material in more than one language.
The mainLang attribute should be used only for the chief language.
Other languages used may be specified using the otherLangs attribute
as in the following example:
Mostly Old Church Slavonic, with
some Russian and Greek material
Since Old Church Slavonic may be written in either Cyrillic or Glagolitic
scripts, and even occasionally in both within the same manuscript, it might be
preferable to use a more explicit identifier:
Old Church Slavonic in Cyrillic script
The form and scope of language identifiers recommended by these Guidelines is
based on the IANA standard described at and should be
followed throughout. Where additional detail is needed correctly to describe a
language, or to discuss its deployment in a given text, this should be done
using the langUsage element in the TEI header, within which individual
language elements document the languages used: see .
Note that the language element defines a particular combination of
human language and writing system. Only one language element may be
supplied for each such combination. Standard TEI practice also allows this
element to be referenced by any element using the global xml:lang
attribute in order to specify the language applicable to the content of that
element. For example, assuming that language elements have been defined
with the identifiers fr (for French), la (for
Latin), and de (for German), a manuscript description written in
French which specifies that a particular manuscript contains predominantly
German but also some Latin material, might have a textLang element like
the following:
allemand et
latin
Physical Description
Under the general heading physical description we
subsume a large number of different aspects generally regarded as useful in the
description of a given manuscript. These include: aspects of the form, support, extent, and quire structure of the
manuscript object and of the way in which the text is laid out on the page ();the styles of writing, such as the way it is laid out on the page, the
styles of writing, decorative features, any musical notation employed and any
annotations or marginalia (); and discussion of its binding, seals, and any accompanying material ().
Most manuscript descriptions touch on several of these categories of
information though few include them all, and not all distinguish them as clearly
as we propose here. In particular, it is often the case that an existing
description will include information for which we propose distinct elements
within a single paragraph, or even sentence. The encoder must then decide
whether to rewrite the description using the structure proposed here, or to
retain the existing prose, marked up simply as a series of p elements,
directly within the physDesc element.
The physDesc element may thus be used in either of two distinct
ways. It may contain a series of paragraphs addressing topics listed above and
similar ones. Alternatively, it may act as a container for any choice of the
more specialized elements described in the remainder of this section, each of
which itself contains a series of paragraphs, and may also have more specific
attributes.
In general, it is not recommended to combine unstructured prose description
with usage of the more specialized elements, as such an approach complicates
processing, and may lead to inconsistency within a single manuscript
description. A single physDesc element will normally contain either a
series of model.pLike elements, or a sequence of
specialized elements from the model.physDescPart
class. There are however circumstances in which this is not feasible, for
example: the description already exists in a prose form where some of the
specialized topics are treated together in paragraphs of prose, but others are
treated distinctly;although all parts of the description are clearly distinguished, some of
them cannot be mapped to a pre-existing specialized element.
In such situations, both specialized and generic (model.pLike) elements may be combined in a single physDesc.
Note however that all generic elements given must precede the first specialized
element in the description. Thus the following is valid:
Generic descriptive prose...
but neither of the following is valid:
<physDesc>
<objectDesc form="codex">
<!-- ... -->
</objectDesc>
<p>Generic descriptive prose...</p>
</physDesc>
<physDesc>
<objectDesc form="codex">
<!-- ... -->
</objectDesc>
<p>Generic descriptive prose...</p>
<!-- other specific elements here -->
</physDesc>
The order in which specific elements may appear is also constrained by the
content model; again this is for simplicity of processing. They may of course be
processed or displayed in any desired order, but for ease of validation, they
must be given in the order specified below.
Object Description
The objectDesc element is used to group together those parts of the
physical description which relate specifically to the text-bearing object, its
format, constitution, layout, etc. The objectDesc element is used for grouping
elements relating to the physicality of a text-bearing object as part of a manuscript
description. If a full description of an object (text-bearing or not) is desired, the
more general object element may be preferred.
The form attribute is used to
indicate the specific type of writing vehicle being described, for example, as a
codex, roll, tablet, etc. If used it must appear first in the sequence of
specialized elements. The objectDesc element has two parts: a
description of the support, i.e. the physical carrier on which the
text is inscribed; and a description of the layout, i.e. the way
text is organized on the carrier.
Taking these in turn, the description of the support is tagged using the
following elements, each of which is discussed in more detail below:
Each of these elements contains paragraphs relating to the topic concerned.
Within these paragraphs, phrase-level elements (in particular those discussed
above at ), may be used to tag specific terms of
interest if so desired.
Mostly paper, with watermarks
unicorn (Briquet 9993) and
ox (close to Briquet 2785). The first and last
leaf of each quire, with the exception of quires xvi and xviii, are constituted
by bifolia of parchment, and all seven miniatures have been painted on inserted
singletons of parchment.
This example combines information which might alternatively be more precisely
tagged using the more specific elements described in the following
subsections.
Support
The support element groups together information about the physical
carrier. Typically, for western manuscripts, this will entail discussion of the
material (parchment, paper, or a combination of the two) written on. For paper,
a discussion of any watermarks present may also be useful. If this discussion
makes reference to standard catalogues of such items, these may be tagged using
the standard ref element as in the following example:
Paper with watermark: anchor in a circle with
star on top, countermark B-B with trefoil
similar to Mošin, Anchor N 16801570-1585.
Extent
The extent element, defined in the TEI header, may also be used in a
manuscript description to specify the number of leaves a manuscript contains, as
in the following example:
ii + 97 + ii
Information regarding the size of the leaves may be specifically marked using
the phrase level dimensions element, as in the following example, or
left as plain prose.
ii + 321 leaves 3527
Alternatively, the generic measure element might be used within
extent, as in the following example:
10 Bl.37 x 29 cm
Collation
The collation element should be used to provide a description of a
book's current and original structure, that is, the arrangement of its leaves
and quires. This information may be conveyed using informal prose, or any
appropriate notational convention. Although no specific notation is defined
here, an appropriate element to enclose such an expression would be the
formula element, which is provided when the figures module is included in a schema. Here are some examples of
different ways of treating collation:
1-3:8, 4:6, 5-13:8
There are now four gatherings, the first, second and fourth originally
consisting of eight leaves, the third of seven. A fifth gathering thought to
have followed has left no trace. Gathering I consists of 7 leaves, a first leaf, originally conjoint with
fol. 7, having been cut away leaving only a narrow strip along
the gutter; the others, fols 1 and 6,
2 and 5, and 3 and
4, are bifolia.Gathering II consists of 8 leaves, 4 bifolia.Gathering III consists of 7 leaves; fols 16 and
22 are conjoint, the others singletons.Gathering IV consists of 2 leaves, a bifolium.
I (1, 2+9, 3+8, 4+7, 5+6, 10); II (11, 12+17, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18,
19).
1-5.8 6.6 (catchword, f. 46, does not match following text) 7-8.8
9.10, 11.2 (through f. 82) 12-14.8 15.8(-7)
Foliation
The foliation element may be used to indicate the scheme, medium or
location of folio, page, column, or line numbers written in the manuscript,
frequently including a statement about when and, if known, by whom, the
numbering was done.
Neuere Foliierung, die auch das Vorsatzblatt mitgezählt
hat.
Folio numbers were added in brown ink by Árni Magnússon ca.
1720-1730 in the upper right corner of all recto-pages.
Where a manuscript contains traces of more than one foliation, each should be
recorded as a distinct foliation element and optionally given a
distinct value for its xml:id attribute. The locus element
discussed in can then indicate which foliation scheme is
being cited by means of its scheme attribute, which points to this
identifier:
Original foliation in red roman numerals in the
middle of the outer margin of each recto
Foliated in pencil in the top right corner of each
recto page.
ff 1-20
Condition
The condition element is used to summarize the overall physical
state of a manuscript, in particular where such information is not recorded
elsewhere in the description. It should not, however, be used to describe
changes or repairs to a manuscript, as these are more appropriately described as
a part of its custodial history (see ). It should be
supplied within the supportDesc element, if it discusses the condition
of the physical support of the manuscript; within the bindingDesc or
binding elements () if it discusses only the
condition of the binding or bindings concerned; or within the sealDesc
element if it discusses the condition of any seal attached to the
manuscript.
The manuscript shows signs of damage from water and mould on its
outermost leaves.
Despite tears on many of the leaves the codex is reasonably well
preserved. The top and the bottom of f. 1 is damaged, and only a thin slip is
left of the original second leaf (now foliated as 1bis). The lower margin of f.
92 has been cut away. There is a lacuna of one leaf between ff. 193 and 194. The
manuscript ends defectively (there are approximately six leaves
missing).
Layout Description
The second part of the objectDesc element is the layoutDesc
element, which is used to describe and document the
mise-en-page of the manuscript, that is the way in which text
and illumination are arranged on the page, specifying for example the number of
written, ruled, or pricked lines and columns per page, size of margins, distinct
textual streams such as glosses, commentaries, etc. This may be given as a simple series
of paragraphs. Alternatively, one or more different layouts may be identified
within a single manuscript, each described by its own layout element.
Where the layout element is used, the layout will often be
sufficiently regular for the attributes on this element to convey all that is
necessary; more usually however a more detailed treatment will be required. The
attributes are provided as a convenient shorthand for commonly occurring cases,
and should not be used except where the layout is regular. The value
NA (not-applicable) should be used for cases where the layout is
either very irregular, or where it cannot be characterized simply in terms of
lines and columns, for example, where blocks of commentary and text are arranged
in a regular but complex pattern on each page
The following examples indicate the range of possibilities:
Most pages have between 25 and 32 long lines ruled in lead.
Written in one column throughout; 24 lines per page.
Written in 3 columns, with 8 lines of text and interlinear glosses in
the centre, and up to 26 lines of gloss in the outer two columns. Double
vertical bounding lines ruled in hard point on hair side. Text lines ruled
faintly in lead. Remains of prickings in upper, lower, and outer (for 8 lines of
text only) margins.
Where multiple layout elements are supplied, the scope for each
specification can be indicated by means of locus elements within the
content of the element, as in the following example:
On fols 1r-200v and fols 210r-212v there are between 25 and 32 ruled lines.
On fols 203r-209v there are between 34
and 50 ruled lines.
Writing, Decoration, and Other Notations
The second group of elements within a structured physical description
concerns aspects of the writing, illumination, or other notation (notably,
music) found in a manuscript, including additions made in later hands—the
text, as it were, as opposed to the carrier.
Writing
The handDesc element can contain a short description of the general
characteristics of the writing observed in a manuscript, as in the following
example:
Written in a late Caroline minuscule; versals in a form of
rustic capitals; although the marginal and interlinear gloss is
written in varying shades of ink that are not those of the main text, text and
gloss appear to have been copied during approximately the same time span.
Note the use of the term element to mark specific technical terms
within the context of the handDesc element.
Where several distinct hands have been identified, this fact can be
registered by using the hands attribute, as in the following example:
The manuscript is written in two contemporary hands, otherwise unknown, but
clearly those of practised scribes. Hand I writes ff. 1r-22v and hand II ff. 23
and 24. Some scholars, notably Verner Dahlerup and Hreinn Benediktsson, have
argued for a third hand on f. 24, but the evidence for this is
insubstantial.
Alternatively, or in addition, where more specific information about one or
more of the hands identified is to be recorded, the handNote element
should be used, as in the following example:
The first part of the manuscript, fols
1v-72v:4, is written in a practised Icelandic Gothic bookhand. This hand
is not found elsewhere.
The second part of the manuscript, fols
72v:4-194, is written in a hand contemporary with the first; it can also
be found in a fragment of
Knýtlinga saga, AM 20b II
fol..
The third hand has written the majority of the chapter headings. This hand
has been identified as the one also found in AM 221
fol..
Note here the use of the locus element, discussed in section , to specify exactly which parts of a manuscript are written by
a given hand.
When a full or partial transcription of a manuscript is available in addition
to the manuscript description, the handShift element described in can be used to link the relevant parts of the transcription to
the appropriate handNote element in the description: for example, at
the point in the transcript where the second hand listed above starts (i.e. at
folio 72v:4), we might insert handShift new="#Eirsp-2"/.
Additions, notes, drawings etc. (e.g. add, note and figure) made by other hands
in the text, can be linked to the corresponding handNote element using the hand attribute.
The elements typeDesc, and typeNote are used to provide
information about the printing of a source, in exactly the same way as the
handDesc or handNote elements provide information about its
writing. They are provided for the convenience of those using this module to
provide information about early printed sources and incunables. The
typeDesc element can simply provide a summary description:
Uses a mixture of Roman and Black Letter types.
Where detailed information about individual typefaces is to be recorded, this
may be done using the typeNote element:
Uses a mixture of Roman and Black Letter types.Antiqua typeface, showing influence of Jenson's Venetian
fonts.The black letter face is a variant of Schwabacher.
Where information is required about both typography and written script, for
example where a printed book contains extensive handwritten annotation, both
handDesc and typeDesc elements should be supplied. Similarly,
in the following example, the source text is a typescript with extensive
handwritten annotation:
Authorial typescript, probably produced on Eliot's own
Remington. Ezra Pound's annotations.Commentary in Eliot's hand.
The elements scriptNote and scriptDesc may be used in
exactly the same way to document a script used in this and other manuscripts,
for example to record that this script was used mainly for the production of
books or for charters; or that it is characteristic of some geographical area or
scriptorium or date. Such information as the letter forms characteristic of this
script may also be recorded. By contrast, the handNote element would be
used to document the way that a particular scribe uses a script, for example
with long or short descenders, or using a pen which is cut in a different way,
or an ink of a given colour, and so forth.
As with typeNote, the scriptNote element can be used in
combination with handNote.
Decoration
It can be difficult to draw a clear distinction between aspects of a
manuscript which are purely physical and those which form part of its
intellectual content. This is particularly true of illuminations and other forms
of decoration in a manuscript. We propose the following elements for the purpose
of delimiting discussion of these aspects within a manuscript description, and
for convenience locate them all within the physical description, despite the
fact that the illustrative features of a manuscript will in many cases also be
seen as constituting part of its intellectual content.
The decoDesc element may contain simply one or more paragraphs
summarizing the overall nature of the decorative features of the manuscript, as
in the following example:
The decoration comprises two full page miniatures, perhaps added by the
original owner, or slightly later; the original major decoration consists of
twenty-three large miniatures, illustrating the divisions of the Passion
narrative and the start of the major texts, and the major divisions of the
Hours; seventeen smaller miniatures, illustrating the suffrages to saints; and
seven historiated initials, illustrating the pericopes and major prayers.
Alternatively, it may contain a series of more specific typed decoNote
elements, each summarizing a particular aspect or individual instance of the
decoration present, for example the use of miniatures, initials (historiated or
otherwise), borders, diagrams, etc., as in the following example:
One full-page miniature, facing the beginning of the first Penitential
Psalm.
One seven-line historiated initial, commencing the first Penitential
Psalm.
Six four-line decorated initials, commencing the second through the seventh
Penitential Psalm.
Some three hundred two-line versal initials with pen-flourishes, commencing
the psalm verses.
Four-sided border decoration surrounding the miniatures and three-sided
border decoration accompanying the historiated and decorated initials.
Where more exact indexing of the decorative content of a manuscript is
required, the standard TEI elements term or index may be used
within the prose description to supply or delimit appropriate iconographic
terms, as in the following example:
Fourteen large miniatures with arched tops, above five lines of text: fol. 14rPericopes. St. John writing on Patmos,
with the Eagle holding his ink-pot and pen-case; some flaking of pigment,
especially in the skyfol. 26rHours of the Virgin, Matins.
Annunciation; Gabriel and the Dove to the rightfol. 60rPrime. Nativity; the Virgin and
Joseph adoring the Childfol. 66rTerce. Annunciation to the Shepherds,
one with bagpipes
Musical Notation
Where a manuscript contains music, the musicNotation element may be
used to describe the form of notation employed, as in the following examples:
Square notation on 4-line red staves.
Neumes in campo aperto of the St. Gall type.
If a manuscript employs more than one notation, they must both be described within the
same musicNotation element, for example as different list items.
Additions and Marginalia
The additions element can be used to list or describe any additions
to the manuscript, such as marginalia, scribblings, doodles, etc., which are
considered to be of interest or importance. Such topics may also be discussed or
referenced elsewhere in a description, for example in the history
element, in cases where the marginalia provide evidence of ownership. Note that
this element may not be repeated within a single manuscript description. If
several different kinds of additional matter are discussed, the content may be
structured as a labelled list or a series of paragraphs. Some examples follow:
Doodles on most leaves, possibly by children, and often quite
amusing.
Quelques annotations marginales des XVIe et XVIIe s.
The text of this manuscript is not interpolated with sentences from Royal
decrees promulgated in 1294, 1305 and 1314. In the margins, however, another
somewhat later scribe has added the relevant paragraphs of these decrees, see
pp. 8, 24, 44, 47 etc.
As a humorous gesture the scribe in one opening of the manuscript, pp. 36 and
37, has prolonged the lower stems of one letter f and five letters þ and has
them drizzle down the margin.
Spaces for initials and chapter headings were left by the scribe but not
filled in. A later, probably fifteenth-century, hand has added initials and
chapter headings in greenish-coloured ink on fols 8r,
8v, 9r, 10r and 11r.
Although a few of these chapter headings are now rather difficult to read, most
can be made out, e.g. fol. 8rbfloti astridar; fol.
9rbvm olaf conung, and fol.
10raGipting olafs
konungs.
The manuscript contains the following marginalia: Fol. 4v, left margin: hialmadr
okbrynjadr, in a fifteenth-century hand, imitating an addition made
to the text by the scribe at this point.Fol. 5r, lower margin: þetta
þiki mer vera gott blek ennda kann ek icki
betr sia, in a fifteenth-century hand, probably the same as that on the
previous page.Fol. 9v, bottom margin: þessa bok
uilda eg gæt lært med
an Gud gefe myer Gott ad
læra; seventeenth-century hand.
There are in addition a number of illegible scribbles in a later hand (or
hands) on fols 2r, 3r, 5v and
19r.
Bindings, Seals, and Additional Material
The third major component of the physical description relates to supporting
but distinct physical components, such as bindings, seals and accompanying
material. These may be described using the following specialist elements:
Binding Descriptions
The bindingDesc element contains a description of the state of the
present and former bindings of a manuscript, including information about its
material, any distinctive marks, and provenance information. This may be given
as a series of paragraphs if only one binding is being described, or as a series
of distinct binding elements, each describing a distinct binding where
these are separately described. For example:
Sewing not visible; tightly rebound over 19th-century pasteboards, reusing
panels of 16th-century brown leather with gilt tooling à la fanfare, Paris c.
1580-90, the centre of each cover inlaid with a 17th-century oval medallion of
red morocco tooled in gilt (perhaps replacing the identifying mark of a previous
owner); the spine similarly tooled, without raised bands or title-piece;
coloured endbands; the edges of the leaves and boards gilt. Boxed.
Within a binding description, the elements decoNote and
condition are available, as alternatives to p, for paragraphs
dealing exclusively with information about decorative features of a binding, or
about its condition, respectively.
Bound, s. XVIII (?), in diced russia leather
retaining most of the original 15th century metal ornaments (but with some
replacements) as well as the heavy wooden boards.
On each cover: alternating circular stamps of the Holy Monogram, a
sunburst, and a flower.
On the cornerpieces, one of which is missing, a rectangular stamp
of the Agnus Dei.
Front and back leather inlaid panels very badly worn.
Rebacked during the 19th century.
As noted above, () the element condition may
also be used as an alternative to p for paragraphs concerned
exclusively with the condition of a binding, where this has not been supplied as
part of the physical description.
Seals
The sealDesc element supplies information about the seal(s) attached
to documents to guarantee their integrity, or to show authentication of the
issuer or consent of the participants. It may contain one or more paragraphs
summarizing the overall nature of the seals, or may contain one or more
seal elements.
Round seal of Anders Olufsen in black wax: DAS
930. Parchment tag, on which is written: pertinere nos
predictorum placiti nostri iusticarii precessorum dif.
The seal of Jens Olufsen in black wax: DAS
1061. Legend: S IOHANNES OLAVI. Parchment tag on
which is written: Woldorp Iohanne G.
Accompanying Material
The circumstance may arise where material not originally part of a manuscript
is bound into or otherwise kept with a manuscript. In some cases this material
would best be treated in a separate msPart element (see below). There are, however, cases where the additional matter
is not self-evidently a distinct manuscript: it might, for example, be a set of
notes by a later scholar, or a file of correspondence relating to the
manuscript. The accMat element is provided as a holder for this kind of
information.
Here is an example of the use of this element, describing a note by the
Icelandic manuscript collector Árni Magnússon which has been bound with the
manuscript:
A slip in Árni Magnússon's hand has been stuck to the pastedown on the inside
front cover; the text reads: Þidreks Søgu þessa hefi eg
feiged af Sekreterer Wielandt Anno 1715 i Kaupmanna høfn. Hun er, sem eg sie,
Copia af Austfirda bókinni (Eidagás) enn ecki progenies Brædratungu
bokarinnar. Og er þar fyrer eigi i allann máta samhlioda
þeirre er Sr Jon Erlendz son hefer ritad fyrer Mag. Bryniolf. Þesse
Þidreks Saga mun vera komin fra Sr Vigfuse á Helgafelle.
History
The following elements are used to record information about the history of a
manuscript:
The three components of the history element all have the same
substructure, consisting of one or more paragraphs marked as p
elements. Each of these three elements is also a member of the att.datable attribute class, itself a member of the att.datable.w3c class, and thus also carries the following
optional attributes:
Information about the origins of the manuscript, its place and date of
writing, should be given as one or more paragraphs contained by a single
origin element; following this, any available information on distinct
stages in the history of the manuscript before its acquisition by its current
holding institution should be included as paragraphs within one or more
provenance elements. Finally, any information specific to the means by
which the manuscript was acquired by its present owners should be given as
paragraphs within the acquisition element.
Here is a fairly simple example of the use of this element:
Written in Durham during the mid-twelfth
century.
Recorded in two medieval catalogues of the books belonging to
Durham Priory, made in 1391 and
1405.
Given to W. Olleyf by William Ebchester, Prior (1446-56) and later belonged to
Henry Dalton, Prior of Holy Island (Lindisfarne) according to inscriptions on ff. 4v and 5.
Presented to Trinity College in
1738 by Thomas Gale and his son Roger.
Here is a fuller example, demonstrating the use of multiple
provenance elements where distinct periods of ownership for the
manuscript have been identified:
Written in Spain or Portugal in the
middle of the 13th century (the date 1042, given in a marginal note on f. 97v,
cannot be correct.)The Spanish scholar Benito Arias Montano
(1527-1598) has written his name on f. 97r, and may be presumed to have owned
the manuscript. It came somehow into the possession of etatsrådHolger Parsberg (1636-1692), who has written his name
twice, once on the front pastedown and once on f. 1r, the former dated
1680 and the latter 1682.Following Parsberg's death the manuscript was bought by
etatsrådJens Rosenkrantz (1640-1695) when Parsberg's library
was auctioned off (23 October 1693).The manuscript was acquired by
Árni Magnússon from the estate of Jens Rosenkrantz, presumably at auction (the
auction lot number 468 is written in red chalk on the flyleaf), either in 1696
or 97.
Additional Information
Three categories of additional information are provided for by
the scheme described here, grouped together within the
additional element described in this section.
None of these specialized constituent elements of
additional is required. If any is supplied, it may appear
once only; furthermore, the order in which elements are supplied
should be as specified above. Alternatively, additional information may be
provided as either one or more paragraphs or anonymous blocks, marked up as
a series of p or ab elements.
Administrative Information
The adminInfo element is used to hold information relating to the
curation and management of a manuscript. This may be supplied as a note using
the global note element. Alternatively, different aspects of this
information may be presented grouped within one of the following
specialized elements:
Record History
The recordHist element may contain simply a series of paragraphs.
Alternatively it may contain a source element, followed by an optional
series of change elements.
The source element is used to document the primary source of
information for the record containing it, in a similar way to the standard TEI
sourceDesc element within a TEI Header. If the record is a new one,
made without reference to anything other than the manuscript itself, then it may
simply contain a p element, as in the following example:
Directly catalogued from the original manuscript.
Frequently, however, the record will be derived from some previously existing
description, which may be specified using the standard TEI bibl
element, as in the following example:
Information transcribed from The index of Middle English
verse123.
If, as is likely, a full bibliographic description of the source from which
cataloguing information was taken is included within the listBibl
element contained by the current additional element, or elsewhere in
the current document, then it need not be repeated here. Instead, it should be
referenced using the standard TEI ref element, as in the following
example:
Information transcribed from IMEV
123.
Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope RobbinsThe index of Middle English verseNew York1943
The change element may also appear within the revisionDesc
element of the standard TEI header; its use here is intended to signal the
similarity of function between the two container elements. Where the TEI header
should be used to document the revision history of the whole electronic file to
which it is prefixed, the recordHist element may be used to document
changes at a lower level, relating to the individual description, as in the
following example:
On 10 March 2005 MJD added provenance
information
Availability and Custodial History
The availability element is another element also available in the
TEI header, which should be used here to supply any information concerning
access to the current manuscript, such as its physical location (where this is
not implicit in its identifier), any restrictions on access, information about
copyright, etc.
Viewed by appointment only, to be arranged with curator.
In conservation, Jan. - Mar., 2002. On loan to the Bayerische
Staatsbibliothek, April - July, 2002.
The manuscript is in poor condition, due to many of the leaves being brittle
and fragile and the poor quality of a number of earlier repairs; it should
therefore not be used or lent out until it has been conserved.
The custodialHist record is used to describe the custodial history
of a manuscript, recording any significant events noted during the period that
it has been located within its holding institution. It may contain either a
series of p elements, or a series of custEvent elements, each
describing a distinct incident or event, further specified by a type
attribute, and carrying dating information by virtue of its membership in the
att.datable class, as noted above.
Here is an example of the use of this element:
Conserved between March 1961 and February 1963 at Birgitte Dalls
Konserveringsværksted.
Photographed in May 1988 by AMI/FA.
Dispatched to Iceland 13 November 1989.
Surrogates
The surrogates element is used to provide information about
representations such as photographs or other representations of the manuscript
which may exist within the holding institution or elsewhere.
The surrogates element should not be used to repeat information
about representations of the manuscript available within published works; this
should normally be documented within the listBibl element within the
additional element. However, it is often also convenient to record
information such as negative numbers or digital identifiers for unpublished
collections of manuscript images maintained within the holding institution, as
well as to provide more detailed descriptive information about the surrogate
itself. Such information may be provided as prose paragraphs, within which
identifying information about particular surrogates may be presented using the
standard TEI bibl element, as in the following example:
microfilm (master)G.neg. 160
n.d.microfilm (archive)G.pos. 186
n.d.b/w printsAM 795 4to27 January 1999copy of G.pos.
186b/w printsreg.nr. 7525 January 1999photographs of the spine, outside covers, stitching etc.
Note the use of the specialized form of title (general material
designation) to specify the kind of surrogate being documented.
At a later revision, the content of the surrogates element is likely
to be expanded to include elements more specifically intended to provide
detailed information such as technical details of the process by which a digital
or photographic image was made. For information about the inclusion of digital
facsimile images within a TEI document, refer also to .
Manuscript Parts
The msPart element may be used in cases where manuscripts or parts
of manuscripts that were originally physically separate have been bound together
and/or share the same call number.
Since each component of such a composite manuscript will in all likelihood
have its own content, physical description, history, and so on, the structure of
msPart is in the main identical to that of msDesc, allowing
one to retain the top level of identity (msIdentifier), but to branch
out thereafter into as many parts, or even subparts, as necessary.
BrusselsKoninklijke Bibliotheek van België / Bibliothèque royale de
Belgiquems. 10066-77Miscellany of various texts; Prudentius,
Psychomachia; Physiologus de natura animantiumLatinms. 10066-77 ff. 140r-156vPhysiologusLatinms. 10066-77 ff. 112r-139rPrudentius, PsychomachiaLatin
Manuscript Fragments
The msFrag element may be used inside msDesc when encoding
one or more fragments of a scattered or fragmented manuscript. The fragment(s)
described in a single msDesc element may be held either at several
institutions or at a single institution, so different call numbers may be
attached to the fragments. Inside the msFrag element, information about
the single fragment or each dispersed part is provided: e.g. the current
shelfmark or call number, the labels of the range of folios concerned if the
fragment currently forms part of a larger manuscript, dimensions, extent, title,
author, annotations, illuminations and so on.
One well-known example of fragmentation is the Old Church Slavonic manuscript
known as
Codex Suprasliensis, substantial parts of which are to
be found in three separate repositories, in Ljubljana, Warsaw, and St.
Petersburg. This manuscript should be represented using one single
msDesc element in which msName is used to identify the
fragmented manuscript, along with three distinct msFrag elements, each
of which contains the current identifier of one of the fragments, a physical
description, and other related information:
Codex SuprasliensisLjubljanaNarodna in univerzitetna knjiznicaMS Kopitar 2Contains ff. 10 to 42 onlyWarszawaBiblioteka NarodowaBO 3.201Sankt-PeterburgRossiiskaia natsional'naia bibliotekaQ.p.I.72
Module for Manuscript Description
The module described in this chapter makes available the following
components:
Manuscript DescriptionManuscript DescriptionDescription de manuscrits寫本描述Descrizione di manoscrittiDescrição do manuscrito手書きモジュール
The selection and combination of modules to form a TEI schema is
described in .