Rethinking historical research in the digital age: A TEI approach

Camille Desenclos(École nationale des chartes – Équipe d'accueil 3624)

2012, 9th october. – IHR Digital History Seminar

manuscript

printed

paper published

dematerialised

How managing the support transfer?

Modification of the historian work

● Take benefit of the digital technologies by choosing them, not by suffering them.

● What relationship between historical research and computing tools?E. Le Roy-Ladurie, “tomorrow's historian will be programmer or won't be” (1967)

-> rather dialoguing with the computer scientist.

● Danger of a over-computerisation.

=> keep the research in the heart of the historian work.

Modification of the relationship with sources

● Closer relationship

=> Precision required by digital technologies: understand the nature and meaning of the source.

● How operate the transition from a manuscript source to a dematerialised tool?

=> source now as access point to informations.

=> edition's issue: conserve the integrity of the source but with a segmenting, semantic encoding (TEI).

Why should we face to this?The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)

● Need of a structured language

● Dedicated to the representation of text in digital form

● A tool not only for publication but as well for data structuring

Correspondences as perfect of the issues of digital transition

Two examples

● Correspondence of the chancellor Antoine du Bourg (http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/dubourg/)

1535-1538, 1200 letters.

Stakes: - give back the coherency to a mass of informations

- collaborative project

● Correspondence of the extraordinary embassy of the duke of Angoulême (still in development)

1620-1621, 87 letters.

Stakes: - give back the coherency

- manage a huge critical apparatus

What rendering? TEI edition as publicationHTML vs TEI

=> edition: transition from a publication tool to a real study object

What added-values ? TEI edition as study object

<persName xml:id="l-1-HenriII" ref="#HenriII-Lorraine">duc de Lorraine</persName>

<person xml:id="HenriII-Lorraine" corresp="#l-I-HenriII-Lorraine #l-1-HenriII #l-2-HenriII #l-4-HenriII #l-6-HenriII"> <persName>Henri II le Bon de Lorraine</persName> <birth>1563</birth> <death>1624</death> <state> <p>duc de Lorraine</p> </state> <event> <p>Il fait ses premières armes par la poursuite et la défaite des troupes allemandes qui étaient entrées en Lorraine et en France pour le secours des protestants lors des guerres de religion. Cependant après la défenestration de Prague, il garde une position neutre et tente de jouer un rôle d'apaisement auprès des différents belligérants.</p> </event> </person>

Normalised form

Whole identification

Other references

=> link directly the name to the text and its context

=> study aim: network reconstitution

New scientific thinking by using TEI: highlighting the datas and thinking about their historical utilisation

Example of names identification

What added-values? TEI as study objectExample of critical apparatus

- lemma identification

What added-values? TEI as study objectExample of critical apparatus

- Establishment of a typology

Major TEI elements<app>: classic variants<add>: addition<del>: suppression<subst>: correction within the source<supplied>: supplied text<gap>: text omitted in the source<choice>: correction by the editor<unclear> : text partly illegible

Major TEI attributes@ reason@ extent@ place@ source

Some examples

<subst> <del>monsieur de Preaux et moy</del> <add place="margin">monsieur d'Angoulesme et de Preaux</add></subst>

a<supplied source="#l-54-B" reason="damaged-margin">yons escript</supplied>

<choice> <sic>28</sic> <corr source="#l-40-C #l-40-D #l-40-E #l-40-F #l-40-G #l-40-H">18</corr></choice>

TEI impact on research

● think not about text flow but about semantic units, historical informations => necessity of an study aim=> collaborative work: research in motion

● To a direct relationship manuscript-digital without the paper transition? => native TEI edition=> create a real semantic encoding

● But TEI isn't a wonderful world: what was impossible doesn't become automatically possible=> example of ciphering

ŋ ?

=> loss of informations makes a close relationship to sources even more useful

Thank you for your attention!

For any further questions: camille.desenclos@enc.sorbonne.fr