Speaking with One Voice: Encoding Standards and the Prospects for an Integrated Approach to Computing in History

Abstract

This paper focusses on the types of questions that are raised in the encoding of historical documents. Using the example of a 17th century Scottish Sasine, the authors show how TEI-based encoding can produce a text which will be of major value to a variety of future historical researchers. Firstly, they show how to produce a machine-readable transcription which would be comprehensible to a word-processor as a text stream filled with print and formatting instructions; to a text analysis package as compilation of named text segments of some known structure; and to a statistical package as a set of observations each of which comprises a number of defined and named variables. Secondly, they make provision for a machine-readable transcription where the encoder’s research agenda and assumptions are reversible or alterable by secondary analysts who will have access to a maximum amount of information contained in the original source.

Daniel I. Greenstein is a Senior Lecturer in Modern History at Glasgow University where he teaches and publishes in American urban and political history and culture, modern British education, and computer methods. Computing works include A Historian’s Guide to Computing (Oxford, 1994).

Lou Burnard is Director of the Oxford Text Archive at Oxford University Computing Services, with interests in electronic text and database technology. He is European Editor of the Text Encoding Initiative’s Guidelines.