1. What is a "quality" electronic text?

As in their bibliographic research material, humanities scholars require an accurate, authoritative electronic text with known provenance. This implies all the scholarly apparatus which is traditionally used to evaluate research and publications in the humanities, plus an appreciation of the electronic properties of the text. If the text is usable only with specific software, the functions of that software also determine the usefulness and "quality" of the text. Documentation is needed of any mark-up performed on the electronic text, with the logic and consistency of the mark-up explained clearly in the front matter, including a citation and address of the persons or company responsible for the input and/or mark-up. The Text Encoding Initiative has published the TEI Guidelines (TEI P3), a two-volume, 1300 page opus that helps scholars make a header with a standard format for the inclusion of all of this and more information in any electronic text.

Establishing standard mark-up schemes, such as the Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML), and formats, such as the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative), is important to track the provenance of the text as well as to validate the authority of one text over another.

For more information on SGML/XML, click here.

For more information on the TEI, click here to visit the TEI home Page.

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