D. Greenstein et L. Burnard, SPEAKING WITH ONE VOICE - ENCODING STANDARDS AND THE PROSPECTS FOR ANINTEGRATED APPROACH TO COMPUTING IN HISTORY, Computers and the humanities, 29(2), 1995, pp. 137-148
Citations number
24
Categorie Soggetti
Art & Humanities General","Computer Sciences, Special Topics","Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications
This paper focusses on the types of questions that are raised in the e
ncoding of historical documents. Using the example of a 17th century S
cottish Sasine, the authors show how TEI-based encoding can produce a
text which will be of major value to a variety of future historical re
searchers. Firstly, they show how to produce a machine-readable transc
ription which would be comprehensible to a word-processor as a text st
ream 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 re
search agenda and assumptions are reversible or alterable by secondary
analysts who will have access to a maximum amount of information cont
ained in the original source.