Keywords: text encoding; job printers; undergraduate collaborators
This paper describes the use of TEI to markup the idiosyncratic features of rare manuscript material from a printer, stationery binder and account book manufacturer, William Townsend & Sons, located in Sheffield, England, 19th century. The collection consists of five objects, dated 1850-1920: a trade ledger, prices volume, work manual (Volume I and the topic of this paper), address book, and library catalogue. This collection is significant because, as Nicholas Pickwoad notes, information about bookbinding for trades exists primarily in secondary sources and trade manuals from the time period (i.e. J. Leonard Monk and W. F. Lawrence, A Text Book of Stationery Binding, 1912).
Volume I is handwritten, with no logical order or typical layout. It includes inserted receipts, price lists, and leather samples amidst details about workday life, industrial connections, commercial transactions, labor, and unionization. Often script is written vertically, text is braced, or complex numerical measurements overfill tables. The presentation will describe the process by which students, a faculty professor, and digital librarian developed a customized TEI schema for a source that does not easily lend itself to representation by the Guidelines. Our project aligns with the work of the Digital Edition Publishing Cooperative for Historical Accounts and broadens the scope of materials the cooperative has for analysis.
Since the project’s inception, funded undergraduate students have served as partners in decision-making, markup processes, and editorial documentation. The project provides students the opportunity to join our ongoing conversations in the TEI community and help determine what structural features ought to be captured in the encoding. Our project challenges them to pose research questions, consider methods for scholarly editing, and help create an accessible and comprehensive digital edition. The team’s goal is to publish an online indexed, fully-searchable transcription that will benefit researchers, contribute to the TEI community, and enrich the public’s knowledge of the work of book production.