Funded by: © AHDS Oxford Text Archive and good practice in the creation of electronic resources Martin Wynne with a lot of help from Ylva Berglund

Funded by: © AHDS Case study: Terms of Address in Ben Jonson’s plays Database of all address terms Instances coded for various parameters –addresser/addressee, type of address, reference, etc. Stored on computer + back-ups on floppy disks The creator is happy to share the resource…

Funded by: © AHDS Problem 1: Hardware/media Changes in hardware → data on old computer and floppies now largely inaccessible Storage media vulnerable

Funded by: © AHDS Problem 2: Software Specialist software → data tied into application Proprietary software → ongoing support for application reliant on commercial interests Program versions: compatibility, different platforms → not compatible

Funded by: © AHDS Problem 3: Coding/mark-up Personal scheme –not comparable to other resources –doesn’t work with generic software Documentation –resource soon becomes unusable if documentation is inadequate or impossible to find

Funded by: © AHDS Problem 4: Sharing Dissemination –Awareness –Distribution –Sustainability

Funded by: © AHDS Solution 1: Hardware/media Migrate data from old hardware Don’t keep on only one machine Don’t store on vulnerable media

Funded by: © AHDS Solution 2: Software Avoid specialised software unless possible to migrate data Consider open source

Funded by: © AHDS Solution 3: Coding/mark-up Use standards Document!

Funded by: © AHDS Example: html This is bold This is a noun

Funded by: © AHDS Example: COCOA %"$C' EST UN GAR*CON SANS IMPORTANCE COLLECTIVE,% %C' EST TOUT JUSTE UN INDIVIDU."% \L#-\F# \CE[LINE. %\L' E[GLISE\.% %AVERTISSEMENT DES E[DITEURS% %$CES CAHIERS ONT E[TE[ TROUVE[S PARMI LES PAPIERS D' \ANTOINE R\OQUENTIN.\% %$NOUS LES PUBLIONS SANS Y RIEN CHANGER.% …

Funded by: © AHDS Example: XML Normal economy return is £262.

Funded by: © AHDS Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) Guidelines for the encoding of electronic texts using XML For interchange Guidelines freely available

Funded by: © AHDS Encoding Choose language/format –e.g. XML Choose coding scheme –e.g. TEI

Funded by: © AHDS Markup and encoding options Word processing files PDF Database HTML SGML XML Plain text Unicode

Funded by: © AHDS Advantages of XML Standard not only in scholarly text encoding, but publishing, web, etc. Growing number of tools Community of users, support Re-usable skills, useful to learn XML resources good for repurposing XML resources good for preservation Disadvantages? Cost, complexity

Funded by: © AHDS Advantages of TEI Standard in scholarly text encoding, Community of users, support available Extensible TEI resources good for interchange Disadvantages: –Cost, complexity –Compromises to text integrity –Overlapping hierarchies

Funded by: © AHDS Disadvantages of TEI Cost, complexity Compromises to text integrity Overlapping hierarchies…

Funded by: © AHDS One officer said: 'This is like an episode from Inspector Morse. "The victim was single but we believe he had several lady friends. "It is possible that it was something in the background of one of those relationships that caused his death.. "We don't think he was linked with any criminals or involved in any secret wrong doing.". Police have not ruled out the possibility of a contract killing by a hitman.

Funded by: © AHDS Solution 4: Sharing Inform user/subject communities Metadata Consider using archives

Funded by: © AHDS Oxford Text Archive Founded in 1976 Collect, catalogue, preserve, and distribute high-quality electronic resources Advise creators and users Part of the AHDS

Funded by: © AHDS AHDS Archaeology History Literature, Languages and Linguistics Performing Arts Visual Arts + Executive

Funded by: © AHDS The OTA today About 2000 resources, in 25 languages Mostly primary texts, ‘classics’ Language corpora Increasingly, more complex resources, with more intellectual content

Funded by: © AHDS The OTA in the future New webpage –More information –New ways of accessing resources Workshops and training events –Digitisation workshop –For new projects –Specialised workshops New resources

Funded by: © AHDS Oxford Text Archive and good practice in the creation of electronic resources Martin Wynne with a lot of help from Ylva Berglund