1. 2010 CALA MW Annual Conference
Cleveland, Ohio and Western Reserve
Digital Text Collection Project
Suzhen Chen
Richard Wisneski
Kevin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University
May 22, 2010

2. Institution
Case Western Reserve University (CRWU)
 Founded in 1967 (federation of Case Institute of
Technology founded in 1881 and Western Reserve
University founded in 1826)
 A private research university in northeast Ohio
 ~10,000 students
Kelvin Smith Library
 Main library of CWRU
 ~ 1.7 million volumes
 ~ 60 library staff

3. Project (What)
Cleveland, Ohio and Western Reserve Digital Text
Collection project
 A collection of digital resources of history of
Cleveland, Ohio and Western Reserve date from
early 19th century to early 20th century
 The collection covers various topics including
women of Cleveland, religion, housing etc.
 About 100 text files added to the collection, more
to be added including some manuscripts

4. Project(Why)
Online representation of the collection
Provide resources for historians, scholars and
others who are interested in Cleveland, OH and
Western Reserve
Serve the learning and teaching purpose
Promote scholarly communication
Long term preservation of regional history

5. Metadata standard
Intended
users
Project Types of
needs materials
Metadata
Standard
Subjects,
Genre Preservation
needs
…

6. TEI: Text Encoding Initiative
 A consortium that develops the standard
for representing texts in digital form.
 Maintain encoding guidelines for text
 Often applies to humanities, social
science and linguistics

7. Example:
Projects from other institutions:
Shakespeare Quartos Archive
Newton Manuscript Project (University of Sussex)
Early American Digital Archive (University of Maryland)

8. Example of TEI Header
<titleStmt>
 <editionStmt>
 <publicationStmt>
…

9. Example of an encoded text

10. TEI Metadata Standard
 Mark up specific genres such as prose, verse,
drama
 Mark content structure such as paragraphs,
divisions
 Mark up feature of a text such as quotations,
footnotes etc.
 Mark up texts for literary and linguistic analysis

11. Example
http://tbe.kantl.be/TBE/TBE.htm?page=examples

12. Example of an encoded text
<lg>
<l rend="font-size(110%) indent(-60)">"Fury said to</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(-40px)">a mouse, That</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(0px)">he met</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(10px)">in the</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(20px)">house,</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(17px)">'Let us</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(5px)">both go</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(-7px)">to law:</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(-23px)"><hi
rend="italic">I</hi> will</l>
<l rend="font-size(100%) indent(-26px)">prosecute</l>
<l rend="font-size(90%) indent(-40px)"><hi
rend="italic">you.</hi> —</l>
<l rend="font-size(90%) indent(-30px)">Come, I'll</l>
<l rend="font-size(90%) indent(-20px)">take no</l>
<l rend="font-size(90%) indent(-7px)">denial;</l>
…
</lg>
http://tbe.kantl.be/TBE/TBE.htm?page=examples

13. TEI Metadata Standard
Provides various manifestations of a text or audio
Independent of applications
TEI is extensible
Accommodate encoding methods for data processing
needs and analysis
For better description, organization and classification
of information

14. Implementation
Staff
Funding
Time management
…

15. Cleveland, Ohio and Western Reserve
Digital Text Collection project
Establish
Finalize the workflows, Trainings are
project policies and provided
procedures
Run through
optical character
Text files
recognition
scanned
software – Abbyy
FineReader

16. Procedures
Spelling check for the texts
Create TEI headers
Bibliographic description,
revisions, source of text
Encode the text
Quality control

17. Implementation
 Workshops
 In-house documentations for best practice
 Standards
 On line resources
 Examples for completed work
 Assistance from supervisor
 Learn from each other

18. Example of an In-house
documentation

19. Cleveland, Ohio and Western Reserve
Digital Text Collection project
 For future metadata conversion, exchange,
facilitate metadata harvesting and
federated search
 Facilitate metadata sharing and cross-
collection searching

20. Future Improvement
Make text searchable through web
Have hyper linked, referenced electronic
resources

21. Resources
 WWP Guide to Scholarly Text Encoding:
http://www.wwp.brown.edu/encoding/guide/index.ht
ml
 Teach Yourself TEI: http://www.tei-
c.org/Support/Learn/tutorials.xml
 A Gentle Introduction to XML: http://www.tei-
c.org/release/doc/tei-p4-doc/html/SG.htmlA
 A Companion to Digital Literary Studies:
http://www.digitalhumanities.org/companion/DLS/

22. References
 TEI: Text Encoding Initiative, “TEI: Text Encoding
Initiative,” 2010, http://www.tei-c.org/index.xml
 International Federation of Library Associations and
Institutions. Cataloging Section. “Functional
Requirements for Bibliographic Records: Final Report,”
1998,
http://www.ifla.org.proxy2.library.uiuc.edu/VII/s13/frbr/frb
r.htm
 TEI By Example Project, “TEI By Example Project,”
2010, http://tbe.kantl.be/TBE/TBE.htm?page=examples
…