The HTML Writers Guild

Marking up an Etext with TEI I

This and the following pages show how to markup up simple Book using TEI. This process will be considered with regard to the following stages.

• The 'meta' data
• The front matter
• The book body
• The back matter

The book that we will use for our example is "The Riders of the Purple Sage" by Zane Grey. Etext #1300. On this page we will look at marking up the meta data, we will look at marking up the rest of the book in the next two pages.

The 'meta' data

The meta data consist of the Gutenberg blurb, the markup and publishing blurb, and some details about the book. Using TEI we will put all this in the fileDesc element of the teiHeader element.

<teiHeader>
 <fileDesc>
   ...
 </fileDesc>
</teiHeader>

The elements we will use are the three obligatory elements, and one optional element (notesStmt) of fileDesc. The elements are titleStmt, publicationStmt, notesStmt and sourceDesc. They must appear in this order.

<teiHeader>
 <fileDesc>
  <titleStmt>
     ...
  </titleStmt>
  <publicationStmt>
     ...
  </publicationStmt>
  <notesStmt>
     ...
  </notesStmt>
  <sourceDesc>
     ...
  </sourceDesc>
 </fileDesc>
</teiHeader>

In the titleStmt element we put the book title and author using the proper elements to contain them, as follows.

  <titleStmt>
    <title>The Riders of the Purple Sage</title>
    <author>Zane Grey</author>
  </titleStmt>

In the publicationStmt element we will put all the Gutenberg blurb. Note that it must all go in <p> elements

  <publicationStmt>

   <p>Project Gutenberg's Etext of Riders of the Purple Sage, by Grey
   #8 in our series by Zane Grey</p>

   <p>
   Copyright laws are changing all over the world 
     ... etc. 
   </p>
 </publicationStmt>

The notesStmt element is a convienient place to put the acknowledgements to the volunters marking up the texts. Note that the text is contained in a note element.

  <notesStmt>
   <note>A Production of Project Gutenberg and the HTML 
   Writers Guild. Etext prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu. 
   Markup by Frank Boumphrey. March 2000</note>
  </notesStmt>

In the sourceDesc element we put details of the source material. Note that (Unfortunately) Gutenberg texts are composite texts, and do not give much information about their sources. All the text must go in <p> elements

  <sourceDesc>

    <p>From a Gutenberg Etext, Riders of the Purple Sage by Zane Grey. 
      Etext prepared by Bill Brewer, billbrewer@ttu.edu. Markup by 
      Frank Boumphrey.</p>
      <p>Project Gutenberg Etexts are usually created from 
      multiple editions, all of which are in the Public Domain in the 
      United States, unless a copyright notice is included.  Therefore, 
      we do NOT keep these books in compliance with any particular 
      paper edition, usually otherwise.</p>
  
  </sourceDesc>

That completes our markup of the meta data for this book using the TEI DTD. The next page discusses marking up the body of the book.