The msdescription moduleThis chapter is based on the work of
the European MASTER (Manuscript Access through Standards for
Electronic Records) project, funded by the European Union from January
1999 to June 2001, and led by Peter Robinson, then at the Centre for
Technology and the Arts at De Montfort University, Leicester
(UK). Significant input also came from a TEI Workgroup headed by
Consuelo W. Dutschke of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia
University (USA) and Ambrogio Piazzoni of the Biblioteca Apostolica
Vaticana (IT) during 1998-2000. defines a special purpose
element which can be used to provide detailed descriptive information
about handwritten primary sources. Although originally developed to
meet the needs of cataloguers and scholars working with medieval
manuscripts in the European tradition, the scheme presented here is
general enough that it can also be extended to other traditions and
materials, and is potentially useful for any kind of inscribed
artefact.
The scheme described here is also intended to accommodate the needs of
many different classes of encoders. On the one hand, encoders may be
engaged in retrospective conversion of existing detailed
descriptions and catalogues into machine tractable form; on the other,
they may be engaged in cataloguing ex nihilo, that
is, creating new detailed descriptions for materials never before
catalogued. Some may be primarily concerned to
represent accurately the description itself, as opposed to the ideas
and interpretations the description represents; others may have
entirely opposite priorities. At one
extreme, a project may simply wish to capture an existing catalogue in
a form that can be displayed on the Web, and which can be searched for
literal strings, or for such features such as titles, authors and
dates; at the other, a project may wish to create, in highly structured
and encoded form, a detailed database of information about the physical
characteristics, history, interpretation, etc. of the material, able
to support practitioners of quantitative codicology as
well as librarians.
To cater for this diversity, here as elsewhere, these Guidelines
propose a flexible strategy, in which encoders must choose for
themselves the approach appropriate to their needs, and
are provided with a choice of encoding mechanisms to support those
differing degrees.
The Manuscript Description Element
The msDesc element will normally appear within the
sourceDesc element of the header of a TEI-conformant
document, where the document being encoded is a digital representation
of some manuscript original, whether as an encoded transcription, as a
collection of digital images (as described in ),
or as some combination of the two. However, in cases where the
document being encoded is essentially a collection of manuscript
descriptions, the msDesc element may be used in the same way
as the bibliographic elements (bibl, biblFull, and
biblStruct) making up the TEI element class model.biblLike. These typically appear within the
listBibl element.
The msDesc element has the following components,
which provide more detailed information under a number of
headings. Each of these component elements is further described in the
remainder of this chapter.
The first of these components, msIdentifier, is the only
one which is mandatory; it is described in more detail in below. It is followed optionally by one or more
head elements, each holding a brief heading (see ), and then either one or more paragraphs, marked up
as a series of p elements, or one or more of the specialized
elements msContents (),
physDesc (), history (), and additional ().
These elements are all optional, but if used they must appear in the
order given here. Finally, in the case of a composite manuscript, a
full description may also contain one or more msPart elements
().
To demonstrate the use of this module, consider the following
sample manuscript description, chosen more or less at random from the
Bodleian Library's
Summary catalogue ()
Entry for Bodleian MS. Add. A. 61 in Madan et al.
1895-1953
The simplest way of digitizing this catalogue entry would simply be
to key in the text, tagging the relevant parts of it which make up
the mandatory msIdentifier element, as follows:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Add. A. 6128843
In Latin, on parchment: written in more than one hand of the 13th
cent. in England: 7¼ x 5⅜ in., i + 55 leaves, in double columns: with
a few coloured capitals.
'Hic incipit Bruitus Anglie,' the De origine et gestis Regum
Angliae of Geoffrey of Monmouth (Galfridus Monumetensis: beg. 'Cum
mecum multa & de multis.'
On fol. 54v very faint is 'Iste liber est fratris guillelmi de
buria de ... Roberti ordinis fratrum Pred[icatorum],' 14th cent. (?):
'hanauilla' is written at the foot of the page (15th cent.). Bought
from the rev. W. D. Macray on March 17, 1863, for £1 10s.
With a suitable stylesheet, this encoding would be as readable as the
original; it would not, however, be very useful for search purposes
since only shelfmarks and other identifiers are distinguished. To
improve on this, one might wrap the paragraphs in the appropriate
special-purpose first-child-level elements of msDesc and add
some of the additional phrase-level elements available when this module is in use:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Add. A. 6128843
Hic incipit Bruitus Anglie, the
De origine et gestis Regum Angliae
of Geoffrey of Monmouth (Galfridus Monumetensis):
beg. Cum mecum multa & de multis.
In Latin.
Parchment: written in
more than one hand: 7¼ x 5⅜ in., i + 55 leaves, in double
columns: with a few coloured capitals.
Written in
England in the
13th cent. On fol. 54v very faint is
Iste liber est fratris guillelmi de buria de ... Roberti
ordinis fratrum Pred[icatorum], 14th cent. (?):
hanauilla is written at the foot of the page
(15th cent.). Bought from the rev. W. D. Macray on March 17, 1863, for
£1 10s.
Note that in this version the text has been slightly reorganized, but
no actual rewriting has been necessary. The encoding now allows the
user to search for such features as title, material, and date and
place of origin; it is also possible to distinguish quoted material
from descriptive passages and to search within descriptions relating
to a particular topic (for example, history as distinct from
material).
This process could be continued further, restructuring the whole
entry so as to take full advantage of many more of the encoding
possibilities provided by the module described in this chapter:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Add. A. 6128843Geoffrey of MonmouthGalfridus MonumetensisDe origine et
gestis Regum AngliaeHic incipit Bruitus AnglieCum mecum multa & de multisLatin
Parchment.
i + 55 leaves
7¼5⅜
In double columns.
Written in more than one hand.
With a few coloured capitals.
Written in England in the 13th cent.
On fol. 54v very faint is
Iste liber est fratris guillelmi de buria de
Roberti ordinis fratrum
Predicatorum, 14th cent. (?):
hanauilla is written at the foot of the page
(15th cent.).
Bought from the rev. W. D. Macray on
March 17, 1863, for £1 10s.
In the remainder of this chapter we discuss all of the encoding
features demonstrated above, together with many other related
matters.
Phrase-level Elements
When the msdescription module is in use, several extra elements are added to
the phrase level class, and thus become available within paragraphs
and elsewhere in the document. These elements are listed below in
alphabetical order:
Within a manuscript description, many other
standard TEI phrase level elements are available, notably those
described in the Core module (). Additional elements
of particular relevance to manuscript description, such as those for
names and dates, may also be made available by including the relevant
module in one's schema.
Origination
The following elements may be used to provide information about the
origins of any aspect of a manuscript:
The origDate and origPlace elements are
specialized forms of the existing date and name
elements respectively, used to indicate specifically the date and
place of origin of a manuscript or manuscript part. Such information
would normally be encoded within the history element,
discussed in section . origDate and
origPlace can also be used to identify the place or date of
origin of any aspect of the manuscript, such as its decoration or
binding, when these are not of the same date or from the same location
as rest of the manuscript. Both these elements are members of the
att.editLike class, from which they inherit
many attributes.
The origDate element is a member of the
att.datable class, and may thus also carry additional attributes giving normalized values for the associated dating.
Material and Object Type
The material element can be used to tag any specific term
used for the physical material of which a manuscript (or binding, seal, etc.)
is composed. The objectType element may be used to tag any term
specifying the type of object or manuscript upon with the text is written.
These elements may appear wherever a term regarded as significant by
the encoder occurs, as in the following examples:
Brown calfskin, previously with two clasps.
Parchmentcodex with half goat-leather binding.
Watermarks and Stamps
Two further elements are provided to
mark up other decorative features characteristic of manuscript leaves and
bindings:
These element may appear
wherever a term regarded as significant by the encoder occurs. The
watermark element is most likely to be of use within the
support element discussed in
below. We give a simple example here: Rag
paper with anchor
watermark
The stamp element will typically appear when text from the source
is being transcribed, for example within a rubric in the following case:
Apologyticu TTVLLIANI AC IGNORATIA IN XPO IHVSI NON LICETNOBIS ROmanii imperii Bodleian stamp
It may also appear as part of the detailed description of a binding:
Modern calf recasing with original armorial stamp
with legend Ex
Bibliotheca J. Richard D.M.
If, as here, any text contained by a stamp is included in its
description it should be clearly distinguished from that
description. The element mentioned may be used for this
purpose, as shown above.
Dimensions
The dimensions element can be used to specify the size of
some aspect of the manuscript, and thus may be thought of as a
specialized form of the existing TEI measure element.
The dimensions element will normally occur within the
element describing the particular feature or aspect of a manuscript
whose dimensions are being given; thus the size of the leaves would be
specified within the support or extent element (part
of the physDesc element discussed in ),
while the dimensions of other specific parts of a manuscript, such as
accompanying materials, binding, etc., would be given in other parts
of the description, as appropriate.
The following elements are available within the dimensions element:
These elements, as well as dimensions itself, are all
members of the att.dimensions class, which
also inherits attributes from the att.ranging class. They all thus carry the
following attributes:
Attributes scope, min and max are used only when the
measurement applies to several items, for example the size of all
leaves in a manuscript; attributes atLeast and
atMost are used when the measurement applies to a single
item, for example the size of a specific codex, but has had to be
estimated. Attribute quantity is used when the measurement
can be given exactly, and applies to a single item; this is the usual
situation. In this case, the units in which dimensions are measured
may be specified using the unit attribute, which will
normally take from a closed set of values appropriate to the project,
using standard units of measurement wherever possible, such as
following values: cm, mm, in,
line, char. If however the only data available
for the measurement uses some other unit, or it is preferred to
normalize it in some other way, then it may be supplied as a string
value by means of the extent attribute.
In the simplest case, only the extent attribute may be
supplied:
six cubits
More usually, the measurement will be normalized into a value
and an appropriate SI unit:
six cubits
Where the exact value is uncertain, the attributes atLeast
and atMost may be used to indicate the upper and lower
bounds of an estimated value:
six cubits
It is often convenient to supply a measurement which applies to a
number of discrete observations: for example, the number of ruled
lines on the pages of a manuscript (which may not all be the same), or
the diameter of an object like a bell, which will differ depending
where it is measured. In such cases, the scope attribute
may be used to specify the observations for which this measurement is
applicable:
This indicates that most pages have at least 20 lines. The attributes
min and max can also be used to specify the possible
range of values: for example, to show that all pages have between 12
and 30 lines:
The dimensions element may be repeated as often as
necessary, with appropriate attribute values to indicate the nature
and scope of the measurement concerned. For example, in the following
case the leaf size and ruled space of the leaves of the manuscript are
specified:
This indicates that for most leaves of the manuscript being described
the ruled space is 90 mm high and 48 mm wide, while the leaves throughout
are between 157 and 160 mm in height and 105 mm in width.
The dim element is provided for cases where some
measurement other than height, width, or depth is required. Its
type attribute is used to indicate the type of measurement
involved:
The order in which components of the dimensions element may be
supplied is not constrained.
References to Locations within a Manuscript
The locus and its grouping element locusGrp
element are specialized forms of the
ref element, used to indicate a location, or sequence of
locations, within a manuscript.
The locus element is used to reference a single location
within a manuscript, typically to specify the location occupied by
the element within which it appears. If, for example, it is used as
the first component of a msItem or msItemStruct
element, or of any of the more specific elements appearing within one
(see further section below) then it is
understood to specify the location (or locations) of that item within
the manuscript being described.
Identifying a Location
A locus element can be used to identify any reference to
one or more folios within a manuscript, wherever such a reference is
appropriate. Locations are conventionally specified as a sequence of
folio or page numbers, but may also be a discontinuous list, or a
combination of the two. This specification should be given as the
content of the locus element, using the conventions
appropriate to the individual scholar or holding institution, as in
the following example:
ff. 1-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
A normalized form of the location can also be
supplied, using special purpose attributes on the locus
element, as in the following revision of the above example:
ff. 1-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
When the item concerned occupies a discontinuous sequence of pages,
this may simply be indicated in the body of the locus
element:
ff. 1-12v, 18-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
Alternatively, if it is desired to indicate
normalized values for each part of the sequence, a sequence of
locus elements can be supplied, grouped within the
locusGrp element:
ff. 1-12vff. 18-24rApocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
Finally, the content of the locus element may be
omitted if a formatting application can construct it automatically
from the values of the from and to attributes:
Apocalypsis beati Ioannis Apostoli
Linking a Location to a Transcription or an Image
The locus attribute can also be used to associate a
location within a manuscript with facsimile images of that location,
using the facs attribute, or with a transcription of the
text occurring at that location. The former association is effected by
means of the facs attribute; the latter by means of the
target attribute.
The facs is available only when the transcr module described in chapter is included in a schema. It associates a locus
element with one or more digitized images, as in the following
example:
fols. 8v-10vBirds Praise of LoveIMEV1506
Here, the facs attribute uses a URI reference to point
directly to images of the relevant pages. This method may be found
cumbersome when many images are to be associated with a single
location. It is of most use when specific pages are referenced within
a description, as in the following example:
Several of the miniatures in this section have been damaged and
overpainted at a later date (e.g. the figure of Christ on fol. 33r; the
face of the Shepherdess on fol. 59v,
etc.).
For further discussion of the facs attribute, see section .
Where a transcription of the relevant pages is available, this may
be associated with the locus element using its
target attribute, as in the following example:
ff. 1r-2rBen JonsonOde to himself
An Ode to him selfe.Com leaue the loathed stageAnd see his chariot triumph ore his wayne.Beal, Index 1450-1625, JnB 380
When (as in this example) a sequence of elements is to be supplied
as target value, it may be given explicitly as above, or using the
xPointer range() syntax defined at . Note
however that support for this pointer mechanism is not widespread in
current XML processing systems.
The target attribute should only be used to point to
elements that contain or indicate a transcription of the locus being
described. To associate a locus element with a page image or
other comparable representation, the global facs attribute
should be used instead.
Using Multiple Location Schemes
Where a manuscript contains more than one foliation, the
scheme attribute may be used to distinguish them. For
example, MS 65 Corpus Christi College, Cambridge contains two fly
leaves bearing music. These leaves have modern foliation 135 and
136 respectively, but are also marked with an older foliation. This
may be preserved in an encoding such as the following:
XCIII135 Here the scheme attribute points to a
foliation element providing more details about the scheme
used, as further discussed in below.
Where discontinuous sequences are identified within two different
foliations, the scheme attribute should be supplied on the
locusGrp element in preference, as in the following:
XCIIICC-CCII135197-204
Names of Persons, Places, and Organizations
The standard TEI element name may be used to identify
names of any kind occurring within a description:
As further discussed in , this element is a member of
the class att.canonical, from which it
inherits the following attributes:
Here are some examples of the use of the name element:
Thomas HoccleveVillingaholtVetus Latina InstitutOccleve
Note that the name element is defined as providing
information about a name, not the person, place, or organization to which that name refers. In the last example above, the ref attribute is used to
associate the name with a more detailed description of the person
named. This is provided by means of the person element, which
becomes available when the namesdates
module described in chapter is included in a
schema. An element such as the following might then be used to provide
detailed information about the person indicated by the name:
HoccleveThomaspoet
Note that an instance of the
person element must be provided for each distinct
ref value specified. For example, in the case above, the value
HOC001 must be found as the xml:id attribute of
some person element; the same
value will be used as the ref attribute of every reference
to Hoccleve in the document (however spelled), but there will only be
one person element with this identifier.
Alternatively, the key attribute may be used to supply
a unique identifying code for the person referenced by the name
independently of both the existence of a person element and
the use of the standard URI reference mechanism. If, for example, a
project maintains as its authority file some non-digital resource, or
uses a database which cannot readily be
integrated with other digital resources for this purpose, the unique
codes used by such offline resources may be used
as values for the key attribute. Although such practices clearly
reduce the interchangeability of the resulting encoded texts, they may
be judged more convenient or practical in certain situations. As explained
in , interchange is improved by use of tag URIs in
ref instead of key.
All the person elements referenced by a particular
document set should be collected together within a listPerson
element, located in the TEI header. This functions as a kind
of prosopography for all the people referenced by the set of
manuscripts being described, in much the same way as a
listBibl element in the back matter may be used to hold
bibliographic information for all the works referenced.
When the namesdates module described
in chapter is included in a schema, similar mechanisms are used to maintain and reference canonical
lists of places or organizations, as further discussed in sections
and respectively.
Catchwords, Signatures, Secundo Folio
The catchwords element is used to describe one method by
which correct ordering of the quires of a codex is ensured. Typically,
this takes the form of a word or phrase written in the lower margin of
the last leaf verso of a gathering, which provides a preview of the
first recto leaf of the successive gathering. This may be a simple
phrase such as the following:
Quires signed on the last leaf verso in roman numerals.
Alternatively, it may contain more details:
Vertical catchwords in the hand of the scribe placed along
the inner bounding line, reading from top to bottom.
The Signatures element is used, in a similar
way, to describe a similar system in which quires or leaves are
marked progressively in order to facilitate arrangement during
binding. For example:
At the bottom of the first four leaves of quires 1-14 are
the remains of a series of quire signatures a-o plus roman figures in
a cursive hand of the fourteenth century.
The signatures element can be used for either leaf
signatures, or a combination of quire and leaf signatures, whether the
marking is alphabetic, alphanumeric, or some ad hoc system, as in the
following more complex example:
Quire and leaf signatures in letters, [b]-v, and roman numerals;
those in quires 10 (1) and 17 (s) in red ink and different from others;
every third quire also signed with red crayon in arabic numerals in the
centre lower margin of the first leaf recto: "2" for quire 4 (f. 19),
"3" for quire 7 (f. 43); "4", barely visible, for quire 10 (f. 65), "5",
in a later hand, for quire 13 (f. 89), "6", in a later hand, for quire
16 (f. 113).
The secFol element (for secundo
folio) is used to record an identifying phrase (also
called dictio probatoria) taken from a
specific known point in a codex (for example the first few words on
the second leaf). Since these words will differ from one copy of
a text to another, the practice originated in the middle ages of using
them when cataloguing a manuscript in order to distinguish individual
copies of a work in a way which its opening words could not.
(ando-)ssene in una villa
Heraldry
Descriptions of heraldic arms, supporters, devices, and mottos may
appear at various points in the description of a manuscript, usually in the context of ownership
information, binding descriptions, or detailed accounts of
illustrations. A full description may also contain a detailed account of the
heraldic components of a manuscript independently considered. Frequently, however, heraldic descriptions will
be cited as short phrases within other parts of the record. The phrase
level element heraldry is provided to allow such phrases to
be marked for further analysis, as in the following
examples:
Ownership stamp (xvii cent.) on i recto with the arms A bull
passant within a bordure bezanty, in chief a crescent for difference
[Cole], crest, and the legend Cole Deum.
A c. 8r fregio su due lati, stemma e imprese medicee
racchiudono l'inizio dell'epistolario di Paolino.
The Manuscript Identifier
The msIdentifier element is intended to provide an
unambiguous means of uniquely identifying a particular
manuscript. This may be done in a structured way, by providing
information about the holding institution and the call number,
shelfmark, or other identifier used to indicate its location within
that institution. Alternatively, or in addition, a manuscript may be
identified simply by a commonly used name.
A manuscript's actual physical location may occasionally be
different from its place of ownership; at Cambridge University, for
example, manuscripts owned by various colleges are kept in the central
University Library. Normally, it is the ownership of the manuscript which should
be specified in the manuscript identifier, while additional or more
precise information on the physical location of the manuscript can be
given within the adminInfo element, discussed in section below.
The following elements are available within msIdentifier
to identify the holding institution:
These elements are all structurally equivalent to the standard TEI
name element with an appropriate value for its
type attribute; however the use of this syntactic
sugar enables the model for msIdentifier to be
constrained rather more tightly than would otherwise be
possible. Specifically, only one of each of the elements listed above
may appear within the msIdentifier and they must, if present,
appear in the order given.
Like name, these elements are all also members of the attribute class
att.canonical, and thus can use the
attributes key or ref to reference a single
standardized source of information about the entity named.
The following elements are used within msIdentifier to
provide different ways of identifying the manuscript within its holding institution:
Major manuscript repositories will usually have a preferred
form of citation for manuscript shelfmarks, including rules
about punctuation, spacing, abbreviation, etc., which should be
adhered to. Where such a format also contains information which might
additionally be supplied as a distinct subcomponent of the
msIdentifier, for example a collection name,
a decision must be taken as to whether to use the more specific
element, or to include such information within the idno element. For
example, the manuscript formally identified as El 26 C 9 forms
a part of the Ellesmere (El) collection. Either of the
following encodings is therefore feasible:
USACaliforniaSan MarinoHuntington LibraryEl26 C 9The Ellesmere ChaucerUSACaliforniaSan MarinoHuntington LibraryEl 26 C 9The Ellesmere Chaucer
In the former example, the preferred form of the identifier can be
retrieved by prefixing the content of the idno element with
that of the collection element, while in the latter it is
given explicitly. The advantage of the former is that it simplifies
accurate retrieval of all manuscripts from a given collection; the
disadvantage is that encoded abbreviations of this kind may not be as
immediately comprehensible. Care should be taken to avoid redundancy:
for example ElEl 26 C 9 would clearly be inappropriate. Equally clearly,
EllesmereEl 26 C 9 might be considered helpful in some circumstances (if, for
example, some of the items in the Ellesmere collection had shelfmarks
which did not begin El).
In some cases the shelfmark may contain no information about the
collection; in other cases, the item may be regarded as belonging to
more than one collection. The collection element may be
added, and repeated as often as necessary to cater for such situations:
HungaryBudapest Bibliothèque de l'Académie des Sciences de Hongrie
Oriental CollectionSandor Kégl BequestMS 1265
USANew JerseyPrincetonPrinceton University LibraryScheide LibraryMS 71Blickling Homiliary
Note in the latter case the use of the msName element to provide
a common name other than the shelfmark by which a manuscript is
known. Where a manuscript has several such names, more than one of these elements may be used, as in the following
example:
DanmarkKøbenhavnDet Arnamagnæanske InstitutAM 45 fol.Codex FrisianusFríssbók
Here the globally available xml:lang attribute has been
used to specify the language of the alternative names.
In very rare cases a repository may have only one manuscript (or
only one of any significance), which will have no shelfmark as such
but will be known by a particular name or names. In such
circumstances, the idno element may be omitted, and the
manuscript identified by the name or names used for it, using
one or more msName elements, as in the following example:
RossanoBiblioteca arcivescovileCodex RossanensisCodex purpureusThe Rossano Gospels
Where manuscripts have moved from one institution to another, or
even within the same institution, they may have identifiers additional
to the ones currently used, such as former shelfmarks, which are
sometimes retained even after they have been officially superseded. In
such cases it may be useful to supply an alternative identifier, with
a detailed structure similar to that of the msIdentifier
itself. The following example shows a manuscript which had shelfmark
II-M-5 in the collection of the Duque de Osuna, but which
now has the shelfmark MS 10237 in the National Library in
Madrid:
MadridBiblioteca NacionalMS 10237AndaluciaOsunaDuque de OsunaII-M-5
Normally, such information would be dealt with under history, except in
cases where a manuscript is likely still to be referred to or known by
its former identifier. For example, an institution may have changed
its call number system but still wish to retain a record of the earlier
number, perhaps because the manuscript concerned is frequently cited in print
under its previous number:
BerkeleyUniversity of CaliforniaBancroft LibraryUCB 162MS BS1145 I8
Where (as in this example) no repository is specified for the
altIdentifier, it is assumed to be the same as that of the
parent msIdentifier. Where the holding institution has only
one preferred form of citation but wishes to retain the other for
internal administrative purposes, the secondary could be given within
altIdentifier with an appropriate value on the
type attribute:
OxfordBodleian LibraryMS. Bodley 4062297
It might, however, be preferable to include such information within
the adminInfo element discussed in section below.
Cases of such changed or alternative identifiers should be clearly
distinguished from cases of scattered
manuscripts, that is to say manuscripts which although physically
disjoint are nevertheless generally treated as single units. One
well-known example is the Old Church Slavonic manuscript known as
Codex Suprasliensis, substantial parts of which are to
be found in three separate repositories, in Ljubljana, Warsaw, and
St. Petersburg. This should be represented using three distinct
altIdentifier elements, using an appropriate value on the
type attribute to indicate that these three identifiers are not
alternate ways of referring to the same physical object, but three
parts of the same entity.
Codex SuprasliensisLjubljanaNarodna in univerzitetna knjiznicaMS Kopitar 2Contains ff. 10 to 42 onlyWarszawaBiblioteka NarodowaBO 3.201Sankt-PeterburgRossiiskaia natsional'naia bibliotekaQ.p.I.72
As mentioned above, the smallest possible description is one that
contains only the element msIdentifier; good practice in all
but exceptional circumstances requires the presence within it of the
three sub-elements settlement, repository, and
idno, since they provide what is, by common consent, the
minimum amount of information necessary to identify a manuscript.
The Manuscript Heading
Historically, the briefest possible meaningful description of a
manuscript consists of no more than a title,
e.g. Polychronicon. This will often have been
enough to identify a manuscript in a small collection because the
identity of the author is implicit. Where a title does not imply the
author, and is thus insufficient to identify the main text of a
manuscript, the author should be stated explicitly
(e.g. Augustinus, Sermones or Cicero,
Letters). Many inventories of manuscripts consist of no
more than an author and title, with some form of copy-specific
identifier, such as a shelfmark or secundo folio reference
(e.g. Arch. B. 3. 2: Evangelium Matthei cum
glossa, 126. Isidori Originum libri
octo, Biblia Hieronimi, 2o fo. opus
est); information on date and place of writing will
sometimes also be included. The standard TEI element head
element can be used to provide a brief description of this kind.
In this way the cataloguer or scholar can supply in one place a
minimum of essential information, such as might be displayed or
printed as the heading of a full description. For example:
Marsilius de Inghen, Abbreviata phisicorum Aristotelis; Italy, 1463.
Any phrase-level elements, such as title, name,
date, or the specialized elements origPlace and
origDate, can also be used within a head element,
but it should be remembered that the head element is intended
principally to contain a heading. More
structured information concerning the contents, physical form, or
history of the manuscript should be given within the specialized
elements described below, msContents, physDesc,
history, etc. However, in simple cases, the p
element may also be used to supply an unstructured collection of
such information, as in the example given above ().
Intellectual Content
The msContents element is used to describe the
intellectual content of a manuscript or manuscript part. It comprises
either a series of informal prose paragraphs
or a series of msItem or msItemStruct
elements, each of which provides a more detailed description of a
single item contained within the manuscript. These may be prefaced, if
desired, by a summary element, which is especially useful
where one wishes to provide an overview of a manuscript's contents and
describe only some of the items in detail.
In the simplest case, only a brief description may be provided, as
in the following examples:
A collection of Lollard sermons
Atlas of the world from Western Europe and Africa to Indochina,
containing 27 maps and 26 tables
Biblia sacra: Antiguo y Nuevo Testamento, con prefacios, prólogos
y argumentos de san Jerónimo y de otros. Interpretaciones de los
nombres hebreos.
This description may of course be expanded to include any of the
TEI elements generally available within a p element, such as
title, bibl, or list. More usually,
however, each individual work within a manuscript will be given its
own description, using the msItem or msItemStruct
element described in the next section, as in the following example:
fols. 5r -7vAn ABCIMEV239fols. 7v -8vLenvoy de Chaucer a ScoganIMEV3747fol. 8vTruthIMEV809fols. 8v-10vBirds Praise of LoveIMEV1506fols. 10v -11vDe amico ad amicamResponcioIMEV16 & 19fols. 14r-126vTroilus and CriseydeBk. 1:71-Bk. 5:1701, with additional losses due to
mutilation throughout
The summary element may be used in conjunction with
one or more msItem elements if it is desired to provide both
a general summary of the contents of a manuscript and more detail
about some or all of the individual items
within it. It may not however be used within an individual
msItem element.
A collection of Lollard sermonsfol. 4r-8r3rd Sunday Before Lentfol. 9r-16vSexagesima
The msItem and msItemStruct Elements
Each discrete item in a manuscript or manuscript part can be
described within a distinct msItem or msItemStruct
element, and may be classified using the class
attribute.
These are the possible component elements of msItem and msItemStruct.
In addition, a msItemStruct may contain nested
msItemStruct elements, just as an msItem may contain
nested msItem elements.
The main difference between msItem and msItemStruct is
that in the former, the order and number of child elements is not
constrained; any element, in other words, may be given in any order,
and repeated as often as is judged necessary. In the latter, however, the
sub-elements, if used, must be given in the order specified above and
only some of them may be repeated; specifically, rubric,
finalRubric. incipit, textLang and
explicit can appear only once.
While neither msItem nor msItemStruct may contain
untagged running text, both permit an unstructured description to be
provided in the form of one or more paragraphs of text. They differ in
this respect also: if paragraphs are supplied as the content of an
msItem, then none of the other component elements listed
above is permitted; in the msItemStruct case, however,
paragraphs may appear anywhere as an alternative to any of the
component elements listed above.
As noted above, both msItem and msItemStruct
elements may also nest, where a number of separate items in a
manuscript are grouped under a single title or rubric, as is the case,
for example, with a work like
The Canterbury Tales.
The elements msContents, msItem,
msItemStruct, incipit, and explicit are all
members of the class att.msExcerpt from
which they inherit the defective attribute.
This attribute can be used for example with collections
of fragments, where each fragment is given as a separate
msItem and the first and last words of each fragment are transcribed as
defective incipits and explicits, as in the following example, a
manuscript containing four fragments of a single work:
1r-9vKnýtlinga saga1r:1-2v:30danna a
englandien meðan haraldr
hein hafði konungr vit
yfir danmork
The elements ex, am, and
expan used in the above example are further discussed in
section ; they are available only when the transcr module defined by that chapter is
selected. Similarly, the g element used in this example to
represent the abbreviation mark is defined by the gaiji module documented in chapter .
Authors and Titles
When used within a manuscript description, the title element should be used to supply a regularized
form of the item's title, as distinct from any rubric quoted from the
manuscript. If the item concerned has a standardized distinctive
title, e.g. Roman de la Rose, then this should
be the form given as content of the title element, with the
value of the type attribute given as
uniform. If no uniform title exists for an item, or none
has been yet identified, or if one wishes to provide a general
designation of the contents, then a supplied
title can be given, e.g. missal, in which case
the type attribute on the title should be given
the value supplied.
Similarly, if used within a manuscript description, the author element should always
contain the normalized form of an author's name, irrespective of how
(or whether) this form of the name is cited in the manuscript. If it
is desired to retain the form of the author's name as given in the
manuscript, this may be tagged as a distinct name element,
within the text at the point where it occurs.
Note that the key attribute can also be used, as on
names in general, to specify the identifier of a person
element carrying full details of the person concerned (see further
).
The respStmt element can be used to supply the name and role of a person other than the author who is responsible for some aspect of the intellectual content of the manuscript:
Diogenes Laertiusin the translation ofAmbrogio Traversari
The respStmt element can also be used where there is a discrepancy between the author of an item as given in the manuscript and the accepted scholarly view, as in the following example:
Sermons on the Epistles and the Gospelshere erroneously attributed toSt. Bonaventura
Note that such attributions of authorship, both correct and incorrect, are frequently found in the rubric or final rubric (and occasionally also elsewhere in the text), and can therefore be transcribed and included in the description, if desired, using the rubric, finalRubric, or quote elements, as appropriate.
Rubrics, Incipits, Explicits, and Other Quotations from the Text
It is customary in a manuscript description to record the opening
and closing words of a text as well as any headings or colophons it
might have, and the specialized elements rubric,
incipit, explicit, finalRubric, and
colophon are available within msItem for doing so,
along with the more general quote, for recording other bits of
the text not covered by these elements. Each of these elements has the
same substructure, containing a mixture of phrase-level elements and
plain text. A locus element can be included within each, in
order to specify the location of the component, as in the following
example:
f. 1-223Radulphus FlaviacensisExpositio super Leviticum f. 1r
Forte Hervei monachif. 223v
Benedictio salis et aquae
In the following example, standard TEI elements for the
transcription of primary sources have been used to mark the expansion
of abbreviations and other features present in the original:
ff. 1r-24vÁgrip af Noregs konunga sǫgumregi oc hann seti
hosc heim sem þiohon heveroc þa buit hesta .ij. annan viþ fé en
honom annan til reiþar
Note here also the use of the defective attribute on incipit and explicit to indicate that the text begins and ends defectively.
The xml:lang attribute for colophon, explicit, incipit, quote, and rubric may always be used to identify the language of the text quoted, if this is different from the default language specified by the mainLang attribute on textLang.
Filiation
The filiation element can be used to provide information on the relationship between the manuscript and other surviving manuscripts of the same text, either specifically or in a general way, as in the following example:
118rbEcce morior cum nichil horum ... [Dn 13, 43]. Verba ista dixit Susanna de illisut bonum comune conservatur.Schneyer 3, 436 (Johannes Contractus OFM)weitere Überl. Uppsala C 181, 35r.
Text Classification
One or more text classification or text-type codes may be
specified, either for the whole of the msContents element, or
for one or more of its constituent msItem elements, using the
class attribute as specified above:
1v-71vJónsbókMagnus med guds miskun Noregs
konungurenn uirda
þo til fullra aura
The value used for the class attribute
in this example points to a
category element with the identifier law, which
defines the classification concerned. Such category elements
will typically appear within
a taxonomy element, within the classDecl
element of the TEI header () as
in the following example:
LegislationMilitary topics
More than one classification may apply to a single item. Another text,
concerned with legislation about military topics might thus be
specified as follows:
A treatise on Clausewitz
Languages and Writing Systems
The textLang element should be used to provide
information about the languages used within a manuscript item. It may take
the form of a simple note, as in the following example:
Old Church Slavonic, written in Cyrillic script.
Where, for validation and indexing purposes, it is thought
convenient to add keywords identifying the particular languages used,
the mainLang attribute may be used. This attribute takes
the same range of values as the global xml:lang attribute,
on which see further . In the following
example a manuscript written chiefly in Old Church Slavonic is described:
Old Church Slavonic
A manuscript item will sometimes contain material in more than one language. The
mainLang attribute should be used only for the chief language.
Other languages used may be specified using the otherLangs
attribute as in the following example:
Mostly Old Church
Slavonic, with some Russian and Greek material
Since Old Church Slavonic may be written in either
Cyrillic or Glagolitic scripts, and even occasionally in both within the
same manuscript, it might be preferable to use a more explicit
identifier:
Old Church Slavonic in Cyrillic script
The form and scope of language identifiers recommended by these
Guidelines is based on the IANA standard described at and should be followed throughout. Where additional
detail is needed correctly to describe a language, or to discuss its
deployment in a given text, this should be done using the
langUsage element in the TEI header, within which
individual language elements document the languages
used: see .
Note that the language element defines a particular
combination of human language and writing system. Only one
language element may be supplied for each such
combination. Standard TEI practice also allows this element to be
referenced by any element using the global xml:lang
attribute in order to specify the language applicable to the content
of that element. For example, assuming that language
elements have been defined with the identifiers fr (for
French), la (for Latin), and de (for
German), a manuscript description written in French which specifies
that a particular manuscript contains predominantly German but also
some Latin material, might
have a textLang element like the following:
allemand et latin
Physical Description
Under the general heading physical description
we subsume a large number of different aspects generally regarded as
useful in the description of a given manuscript. These include:
aspects
of the form, support, extent, and quire structure of the manuscript
object and of the way in which the text is laid out on the page ();the styles of writing, such as the
way it is laid out on the page, the styles of writing, decorative
features, any musical
notation employed and any annotations or marginalia (); and discussion of its binding, seals, and any
accompanying material ().
Most manuscript descriptions touch on several of these categories
of information though few include them all, and not all distinguish
them as clearly as we propose here. In particular, it is often the
case that an existing description will include information for which
we propose distinct elements within a single paragraph, or even
sentence. The encoder must then decide whether to rewrite the
description using the structure proposed here, or to retain the
existing prose, marked up simply as a series of p elements,
directly within the physDesc element.
The physDesc element may thus be used in either of two
distinct ways. It may contain a series of paragraphs addressing topics
listed above and similar ones. Alternatively, it may act as a container for any
choice of the more specialized elements described in the remainder of
this section, each of which itself contains a series of paragraphs,
and may also have more specific attributes.
In general, it is not recommended to combine unstructured prose
description with usage of the more specialized elements, as such an
approach complicates processing, and may lead to inconsistency within
a single manuscript description. A single physDesc element
will normally contain either a series of model.pLike elements, or a sequence of
specialized elements from the model.physDescPart
class. There are however circumstances in which this is not feasible,
for example:
the description already exists in a prose form where some of the
specialized topics are treated together in paragraphs of prose, but
others are treated distinctly;although all parts of the description are clearly
distinguished, some of them cannot be mapped to a pre-existing
specialized element.
In such situations, both specialized and generic
(model.pLike) elements may be combined in a single
physDesc. Note however that all generic elements given must
precede the first specialized element in the description. Thus the
following is valid:
Generic descriptive prose...
but neither of the following is valid:
Generic descriptive prose...
]]>
Generic descriptive prose...
]]>
The order in which specific elements may appear is also constrained by
the content model; again this is for simplicity of processing. They
may of course be processed or displayed in any desired order, but for
ease of validation, they must be given in the order specified
below.
Object Description
The objectDesc element is used to group together those
parts of the physical description which relate specifically to the
text-bearing object, its format, constitution, layout, etc. The
form attribute is used to indicate the specific type of
writing vehicle being described, for example, as a codex, roll,
tablet, etc. If used it must appear first in the sequence of
specialized elements. The objectDesc element has two parts: a description of the
support, i.e. the physical carrier on which the text is
inscribed; and a description of the layout, i.e. the way
text is organized on the carrier.
Taking these in turn, the description of the support is tagged
using the following elements, each of which is discussed in more
detail below:
Each of these elements contains paragraphs relating to the topic
concerned. Within these paragraphs, phrase-level elements (in
particular those discussed above at ),
may be used to tag specific terms of interest if so
desired.
Mostly paper, with watermarks
unicorn (Briquet 9993) and
ox (close to Briquet 2785).
The first and last leaf of each quire, with the exception of
quires xvi and xviii, are constituted by bifolia of parchment,
and all seven miniatures have been painted on inserted
singletons of parchment.
This example combines information which might alternatively be more
precisely tagged using the more specific elements described in the
following subsections.
Support
The support element groups together information about the
physical carrier. Typically, for western manuscripts, this will entail
discussion of the material (parchment, paper, or a combination of the
two) written on. For paper, a discussion of any watermarks present may
also be useful. If this discussion makes reference to standard
catalogues of such items, these may be tagged using the standard
ref element as in the following example:
Paper with watermark: anchor in a circle
with star on top, countermark B-B with
trefoil similar to Moschin, Anchor N 16801570-1585.
Extent
The extent element, defined in the TEI header, may also be
used in a manuscript description to specify the number of
leaves a manuscript contains, as in the following example:
ii + 97 + ii
Information regarding the size of the leaves may be
specifically marked using the phrase level dimensions
element, as in the following example, or left as plain prose.
ii + 321 leaves
3527
Alternatively, the generic measure element might be used within extent, as in the following example:
10 Bl.37 x
29 cm
Collation
The collation element should be used to provide a
description of a book's current and original structure, that is, the
arrangement of its leaves and quires. This information may be conveyed
using informal prose, or any appropriate notational
convention. Although no specific notation is defined here, an
appropriate element to enclose such an expression would be the formula
element, which is provided when the figures module is included in a schema. Here are some examples of different ways of treating collation:
1-3:8, 4:6, 5-13:8
There are now four gatherings, the first, second and fourth originally consisting of
eight leaves, the third of seven. A fifth gathering thought to have followed has left no trace.
Gathering I consists of 7 leaves, a first leaf, originally conjoint with fol. 7,
having been cut away leaving only a narrow strip along the gutter; the others, fols 1
and 6, 2 and 5, and 3 and 4,
are bifolia.Gathering II consists of 8 leaves, 4 bifolia.Gathering III consists of 7 leaves; fols 16 and 22 are conjoint,
the others singletons.Gathering IV consists of 2 leaves, a bifolium.
I (1, 2+9, 3+8, 4+7, 5+6, 10); II (11, 12+17, 13, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19).
1-5.8 6.6 (catchword, f. 46, does not match following
text) 7-8.8 9.10, 11.2 (through f. 82) 12-14.8 15.8(-7)
Foliation
The foliation element may be used to indicate the scheme,
medium or location of folio, page, column, or line numbers written in
the manuscript, frequently including a statement about when and, if
known, by whom, the numbering was done.
Neuere Foliierung, die auch das Vorsatzblatt mitgezählt hat.
Folio numbers were added in brown ink by Árni Magnússon
ca. 1720-1730 in the upper right corner of all recto-pages.
Where a manuscript contains traces of more than
one foliation, each should be recorded as a distinct
foliation element and optionally given a distinct value for
its xml:id attribute. The locus element discussed in
can then indicate which foliation scheme is being cited
by means of its scheme attribute, which points to this
identifier:
Original foliation in red roman numerals in the middle of
the outer margin of each recto
Foliated in pencil in the top right
corner of each recto page.
ff 1-20
Condition
The condition element is used to summarize the overall
physical state of a manuscript, in particular where such information
is not recorded elsewhere in the description. It should not, however, be
used to describe changes or repairs to a manuscript, as these are more
appropriately described as a part of its custodial history (see ). It should be supplied within the
supportDesc element, if it discusses the condition of the
physical support of the manuscript; within the bindingDesc or binding elements () if it discusses only the condition of the binding or
bindings concerned; or within the sealDesc element if it
discusses the condition of any seal attached to the manuscript.
The manuscript shows signs of damage from water and mould on its outermost leaves.
Despite tears on many of the leaves the codex is reasonably well preserved.
The top and the bottom of f. 1 is damaged, and only a thin slip is left of the original second
leaf (now foliated as 1bis). The lower margin of f. 92 has been cut away. There is a lacuna of
one leaf between ff. 193 and 194. The manuscript ends defectively (there are approximately six
leaves missing).
Layout Description
The second part of the objectDesc element is the
layoutDesc element, which is used to describe and document the
mise-en-page of the manuscript, that is the way in which text and illumination are arranged on the page, specifying for example the number of written, ruled, or
pricked lines and columns per page, size of margins,
distinct blocks such as glosses, commentaries, etc. This may be given as a simple
series of paragraphs. Alternatively, one or more different layouts
may be identified within a single manuscript, each described by its
own layout element.
Where the layout element is used, the layout will often be
sufficiently regular for the attributes on this element to convey all
that is necessary; more usually however a more detailed treatment will
be required. The attributes are provided as a convenient shorthand for
commonly occurring cases, and should not be used except where the
layout is regular. The value NA (not-applicable) should
be used for cases where the layout is either very irregular, or where
it cannot be characterized simply in terms of lines and columns, for
example, where blocks of commentary and text are arranged in a regular
but complex pattern on each page
The following examples indicate the range of possibilities:
Most pages have between 25 and 32 long lines ruled in lead.
Written in one column throughout; 24 lines per page.
Written in 3 columns, with 8 lines of text and interlinear glosses in
the centre, and up to 26 lines of gloss in the outer two columns. Double
vertical bounding lines ruled in hard point on hair side. Text lines ruled
faintly in lead. Remains of prickings in upper, lower, and outer (for 8 lines
of text only) margins.
Where multiple layout elements are supplied, the scope for
each specification can be indicated by means of locus
elements within the content of the element, as in the following
example:
On fols 1r-200v and
fols 210r-212v there are
between 25 and 32 ruled lines.
On fols 203r-209v there are between 34
and 50 ruled lines.
Writing, Decoration, and Other Notations
The second group of elements within a structured physical description
concerns aspects of the writing, illumination, or other notation (notably, music) found
in a manuscript, including additions made in later hands—the text, as it were, as opposed to the carrier.
Writing
The handDesc element can contain a short description of
the general characteristics of the writing observed in a manuscript,
as in the following example:
Written in a late Caroline minuscule; versals in a
form of rustic capitals; although the marginal and
interlinear gloss is written in varying shades of ink that are
not those of the main text, text and gloss appear to have been
copied during approximately the same time span.
Note the use of the term element to mark specific technical
terms within the context of the handDesc element.
Where several distinct hands have been identified, this fact can be registered by using the hands attribute, as in
the following example:
The manuscript is written in two contemporary hands, otherwise
unknown, but clearly those of practised scribes. Hand I writes
ff. 1r-22v and hand II ff. 23 and 24. Some scholars, notably
Verner Dahlerup and Hreinn Benediktsson, have argued for a third hand
on f. 24, but the evidence for this is insubstantial.
Alternatively, or in addition, where more specific
information about one or more of the hands identified is to be recorded,
the handNote element should
be used, as in the following example:
The first part of the manuscript,
fols 1v-72v:4, is written in a practised
Icelandic Gothic bookhand. This hand is not found elsewhere.
The second part of the manuscript, fols
72v:4-194, is written in a hand contemporary with the first; it can
also be found in a fragment of
Knýtlinga saga,
AM 20b II fol..
The third hand has written the majority of the chapter headings.
This hand has been identified as the one also found in AM
221 fol..
Note here the use of the locus element, discussed in section , to specify exactly which parts of a
manuscript are written by a given hand.
When a full or partial transcription of a manuscript is available
in addition to the manuscript description, the handShift
element described in can be used to link the
relevant parts of the transcription to the appropriate
handNote element in the description: for example, at the
point in the transcript where the second hand listed above starts
(i.e. at folio 72v:4), we might insert handShift
new="#Eirsp-2"/.
The elements typeDesc, and typeNote
are used
to provide information about the printing of a source, in exactly the same way as the handDesc or handNote
elements provide information about its writing. They are provided for
the convenience of those using this module to provide information
about early printed sources and incunables. The typeDesc
element can simply provide a summary description:
Uses a mixture of Roman and Black Letter types.
Where detailed information about individual typefaces is to be
recorded, this may be done using the typeNote element:
Uses a mixture of Roman and Black Letter types.Antiqua typeface, showing influence of Jenson's Venetian
fonts.The black letter face is a variant of Schwabacher.
Where information is required about both typography and written
script, for example where a printed book contains extensive
handwritten annotation, both handDesc and typeDesc
elements should be supplied. Similarly, in the following example, the
source text is a typescript with extensive handwritten annotation:
Authorial
typescript, probably produced on Eliot's own Remington.
Ezra Pound's
annotations.Commentary in
Eliot's hand.
The elements scriptNote and scriptDesc may be used
in exactly the same way to document a script used in this and other
manuscripts, for example to record that this script was used mainly
for the production of books or for charters; or that it is
characteristic of some geographical area or scriptorium or date. Such
information as the letter forms characteristic of this script may also
be recorded. By contrast, the handNote element would be used
to document the way that a particular scribe uses a script, for
example with long or short descenders, or using a pen which is cut in
a different way, or an ink of a given colour, and so forth.
As with typeNote, the scriptNote element can be
used in combination with handNote.
Decoration
It can be difficult to draw a clear distinction between aspects of
a manuscript which are purely physical and those which form part of
its intellectual content. This is particularly true of illuminations
and other forms of decoration in a manuscript. We propose the
following elements for the purpose of delimiting discussion of these
aspects within a manuscript description, and for convenience locate
them all within the physical description, despite the fact that the
illustrative features of a manuscript will in many cases also be seen
as constituting part of its intellectual content.
The decoDesc element may contain simply one or more
paragraphs summarizing the overall nature of the decorative features
of the manuscript, as in the following example:
The decoration comprises two full page miniatures, perhaps added
by the original owner, or slightly later; the original major decoration
consists of twenty-three large miniatures, illustrating the divisions of
the Passion narrative and the start of the major texts, and the major
divisions of the Hours; seventeen smaller miniatures, illustrating the
suffrages to saints; and seven historiated initials, illustrating
the pericopes and major prayers.
Alternatively, it may contain a series of more specific typed
decoNote elements, each summarizing a particular aspect or
individual instance of the decoration present, for example the use of
miniatures, initials (historiated or otherwise), borders, diagrams,
etc., as in the following example:
One full-page miniature, facing the beginning of the first
Penitential Psalm.
One seven-line historiated initial, commencing the first
Penitential Psalm.
Six four-line decorated initials, commencing the second through the
seventh Penitential Psalm.
Some three hundred two-line versal initials with pen-flourishes,
commencing the psalm verses.
Four-sided border decoration surrounding the miniatures and three-sided
border decoration accompanying the historiated and decorated initials.
Where more exact indexing of the decorative content of a manuscript
is required, the standard TEI elements term or index
may be used within the prose description to supply or delimit
appropriate iconographic terms, as in the following example:
Fourteen large miniatures with arched tops, above five lines of text:
fol. 14rPericopes. St. John writing on
Patmos, with the Eagle holding his ink-pot and pen-case; some
flaking of pigment, especially in the skyfol. 26rHours of the Virgin, Matins.
Annunciation; Gabriel and the Dove to the rightfol. 60rPrime. Nativity; the
Virgin and Joseph adoring the Childfol. 66rTerce. Annunciation to the
Shepherds, one with bagpipes
Musical Notation
Where a manuscript contains music, the musicNotation
element may be used to describe the form of notation employed, as in
the following example:
Square notation on 4-line red staves.
Neumes in campo aperto of the St. Gall type.
Additions and Marginalia
The additions element can be used to list or describe any
additions to the manuscript, such as marginalia, scribblings, doodles,
etc., which are considered to be of interest or importance. Such
topics may also be discussed or referenced elsewhere in a description,
for example in the history element, in cases where the
marginalia provide evidence of ownership. Some examples follow:
Doodles on most leaves, possibly by children, and often quite amusing.
Quelques annotations marginales des XVIe et XVIIe s.
The text of this manuscript is not interpolated with sentences from
Royal decrees promulgated in 1294, 1305 and 1314. In the margins, however,
another somewhat later scribe has added the relevant paragraphs of these
decrees, see pp. 8, 24, 44, 47 etc.
As a humorous gesture the scribe in one opening of the manuscript, pp. 36
and 37, has prolonged the lower stems of one letter f and five letters þ
and has them drizzle down the margin.
Spaces for initials and chapter headings were left by the scribe but not filled in.
A later, probably fifteenth-century, hand has added initials and chapter headings in
greenish-coloured ink on fols 8r, 8v, 9r,
10r and 11r. Although a few of these chapter headings are
now rather difficult to read, most can be made out, e.g. fol. 8rbfloti astridar; fol. 9rbvm olaf conung, and fol. 10raGipting olafs konungs.
The manuscript contains the following marginalia:
Fol. 4v, left margin: hialmadr okbrynjadr,
in a fifteenth-century hand, imitating an addition made to the text by the scribe at this point.Fol. 5r, lower margin: þetta þiki
mer vera gott blek ennda kann ek icki
betr sia, in a fifteenth-century hand, probably the same as that on the previous page.Fol. 9v, bottom margin: þessa bok uilda eg gæt
lært med an Gud gefe myer Gott ad læra; seventeenth-century hand.
There are in addition a number of illegible scribbles in a later hand (or hands) on fols
2r, 3r, 5v and 19r.
Bindings, Seals, and Additional Material
The third major component of the physical description relates to
supporting but distinct physical components, such as bindings,
seals and accompanying material. These may be described using the following specialist elements:
Binding Descriptions
The bindingDesc element contains a description of the state of
the present and former bindings of a manuscript, including information
about its material, any distinctive marks, and provenance information. This may
be given as a series of paragraphs if only one binding is being described, or
as a series of distinct binding elements, each describing a distinct
binding where these are separately described. For example:
Sewing not visible; tightly rebound over 19th-century pasteboards, reusing
panels of 16th-century brown leather with gilt tooling à la fanfare, Paris
c. 1580-90, the centre of each cover inlaid with a 17th-century oval medallion
of red morocco tooled in gilt (perhaps replacing the identifying mark of a
previous owner); the spine similarly tooled, without raised bands or title-piece;
coloured endbands; the edges of the leaves and boards gilt. Boxed.
Within a binding description, the elements decoNote and
condition are
available, as alternatives to p, for paragraphs dealing
exclusively with information about decorative features of a binding,
or about its condition, respectively.
Bound, s. XVIII (?), in diced russia leather
retaining most of the original 15th century metal ornaments (but with
some replacements) as well as the heavy wooden boards.
On each cover: alternating circular stamps of the Holy Monogram,
a sunburst, and a flower.
On the cornerpieces, one of which is missing, a rectangular stamp
of the Agnus Dei.
Front and back leather inlaid panels very badly worn.
Rebacked during the 19th century.
As noted above, () the element condition
may also be used as an alternative to p for paragraphs
concerned exclusively with the condition of a binding, where this has
not been supplied as part of the physical description.
Seals
The sealDesc element supplies information about the
seal(s) attached to documents to guarantee their integrity, or to show
authentication of the issuer or consent of the participants. It may
contain one or more paragraphs summarizing the overall nature of the
seals, or may contain one or more seal elements.
Round seal of Anders Olufsen in black wax:
DAS 930. Parchment tag, on which is written:
pertinere nos predictorum placiti nostri iusticarii precessorum dif.
The seal of Jens Olufsen in black wax:
DAS 1061. Legend: S IOHANNES OLAVI.
Parchment tag on which is written: Woldorp Iohanne G.
Accompanying Material
The circumstance may arise where material not originally part of a
manuscript is bound into or otherwise kept with a manuscript. In some
cases this material would best be treated in a separate
msPart element (see below). There are,
however, cases where the additional matter is not self-evidently a
distinct manuscript: it might, for example, be a set of notes by a
later scholar, or a file of correspondence relating to the
manuscript. The accMat element is provided as a holder for
this kind of information.
Here is an example of the use of this element, describing a note by
the Icelandic manuscript collector Árni Magnússon which
has been bound with the manuscript:
A slip in Árni Magnússon's hand has been stuck to the
pastedown on the inside front cover; the text reads:
Þidreks Søgu þessa hefi eg
feiged af Sekreterer Wielandt Anno 1715 i Kaupmanna høfn. Hun er,
sem eg sie, Copia af Austfirda bókinni (Eidagás) enn
ecki progenies Brædratungu bokarinnar. Og er þar fyrer eigi i
allann máta samhlioda þeirre er
Sr Jon Erlendz son hefer ritad fyrer Mag. Bryniolf. Þesse Þidreks
Saga mun vera komin fra Sr Vigfuse á Helgafelle.
History
The following elements are used to record information about the history of a manuscript:
The three components of the history element all have the
same substructure, consisting of one or more paragraphs marked as
p elements. Each of these three elements is also a member of
the att.datable attribute class, itself a
member of the att.datable.w3c class, and
thus also carries the following optional attributes:
Information about the origins of the manuscript, its place and date
of writing, should be given as one or more paragraphs contained by a
single origin element; following this, any available
information on distinct stages in the history of the manuscript before
its acquisition by its current holding institution should be included
as paragraphs within one or more provenance
elements. Finally, any information specific to the means by which the
manuscript was acquired by its present owners should be given as
paragraphs within the acquisition element.
Here is a fairly simple example of the use of this element:
Written in Durham during the
mid-twelfth century.
Recorded in two medieval catalogues of the books belonging
to Durham Priory, made in 1391 and
1405.
Given to W. Olleyf by William
Ebchester, Prior (1446-56) and later belonged to Henry
Dalton, Prior of Holy Island (Lindisfarne)
according to inscriptions on ff. 4v and 5.
Presented to Trinity College in
1738 by Thomas Gale and
his son Roger.
Here is a fuller example, demonstrating the use of multiple
provenance elements where distinct periods of ownership for
the manuscript have been identified:
Written in Spain or Portugal in the middle of the 13th century
(the date 1042, given in a marginal note on f. 97v, cannot be correct.)The Spanish scholar Benito Arias
Montano (1527-1598) has written his name on f. 97r, and may be
presumed to have owned the manuscript. It came somehow into the
possession of etatsrådHolger Parsberg (1636-1692), who has written his
name twice, once on the front pastedown and once on f. 1r, the former dated
1680 and the latter 1682.Following Parsberg's
death the manuscript was bought by etatsrådJens Rosenkrantz (1640-1695) when Parsberg's
library was auctioned off (23 October 1693).The manuscript was acquired by Árni
Magnússon from the estate of Jens Rosenkrantz, presumably at
auction (the auction lot number 468 is written in red chalk on the
flyleaf), either in 1696 or 97.
Additional Information
Three categories of additional information are provided for by the
scheme described here, grouped together within the additional
element described in this section.
None of the constituent elements of additional is
required. If any is supplied, it may appear once only; furthermore,
the order in which elements are supplied should be as specified above.
Administrative Information
The adminInfo element is used to hold information relating to the curation and management of
a manuscript. This may be supplied as a note using the global
note element. Alternatively, different aspects of this
information may be presented grouped within one
of the following specialized elements:
Record History
The recordHist element may contain simply a series of
paragraphs. Alternatively it may contain a
source element, followed by an optional series of
change elements.
The source element is used to document the primary source
of information for the record containing it, in a similar
way to the standard TEI sourceDesc element within a TEI
Header. If the record is a new one, made without reference to anything
other than the manuscript itself, then it may simply contain a p
element, as in the following example:
Directly catalogued from the original manuscript.
Frequently, however, the record will be derived from some
previously existing description, which may be specified using the
standard TEI bibl element, as in the following example:
Information transcribed from The index of Middle English verse123.
If, as is likely, a full bibliographic description of the source
from which cataloguing information was taken is included within the
listBibl element contained by the current additional
element, or elsewhere in the current document, then it need not be
repeated here. Instead, it should be referenced using the standard TEI
ref element, as in the following example:
Information transcribed from
IMEV 123.
Carleton Brown and Rossell Hope RobbinsThe index of Middle English verseNew York1943
The change element
may also appear within the revisionDesc element of the
standard TEI header; its use here is intended to signal the
similarity of function between the two container elements. Where the
TEI header should be used to document the revision history of the
whole electronic file to which it is prefixed, the recordHist
element may be used to document changes at a lower level, relating to
the individual description, as in the following example:
On 10 March 2005
MJD added provenance information
Availability and Custodial History
The availability element is another element also available
in the TEI header,
which should be used here to supply any information concerning
access to the current manuscript, such as its physical location (where this
is not implicit in its identifier), any restrictions on access, information
about copyright, etc.
Viewed by appointment only, to be arranged with curator.
In conservation, Jan. - Mar., 2002. On loan to the
Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, April - July, 2002.
The manuscript is in poor condition, due to many of the leaves being
brittle and fragile and the poor quality of a number of earlier repairs;
it should therefore not be used or lent out until it has been conserved.
The custodialHist record is used to describe the custodial
history of a manuscript, recording any significant events noted during
the period that it has been located within its holding institution. It
may contain either a series of
p elements, or a series of custEvent elements, each
describing a distinct incident or event, further specified by a
type attribute, and carrying dating information by virtue
of its membership in the att.datable class, as noted above.
Here is an example of the use of this element:
Conserved between March 1961 and February 1963 at Birgitte Dalls
Konserveringsværksted.
Photographed in May 1988 by AMI/FA.
Dispatched to Iceland 13 November 1989.
Surrogates
The surrogates element is used
to provide information about
representations such as photographs or other representations of the manuscript which may exist within the holding
institution or elsewhere.
The surrogates element should not be used to repeat
information about representations of the manuscript available within
published works; this should normally be documented within the
listBibl element within the additional
element. However, it is often also convenient to record information
such as negative numbers or digital identifiers for unpublished
collections of manuscript images maintained within the holding
institution, as well as to provide more detailed descriptive
information about the surrogate itself. Such information may be provided
as prose paragraphs, within which identifying information about particular
surrogates may be presented using the standard TEI bibl element,
as in the following example:
microfilm (master)G.neg. 160 n.d.microfilm (archive)G.pos. 186 n.d.b/w printsAM 795 4to27 January 1999copy of G.pos. 186b/w printsreg.nr. 7525 January 1999photographs of the spine, outside covers, stitching etc.
Note the use of the specialized form of title (general material designation) to specify the kind of surrogate being documented.
At a later revision, the content of the surrogates element
is likely to be expanded to include elements more specifically
intended to provide detailed information such as technical details of
the process by which a digital or photographic image was made. For
information about the inclusion of digital facsimile images within a
TEI document, refer also to .
Manuscript Parts
The msPart element may be used in cases where what were
originally physically separate manuscripts or parts of manuscripts
have been bound together and/or share the same call number.
Since each component of such a composite manuscript will in all
likelihood have its own content, physical description, history, and so
on, the structure of msPart is in the main identical to that
of msDesc, allowing one to retain the top level of
identity (msIdentifier), but to branch out thereafter into as
many parts, or even subparts, as necessary. Note that the parts of a
composite manuscript may also have their own identifiers, which should
be tagged using msIdentifier in the same way as in the following example:
AmiensBibliothèque MunicipaleMS 3Maurdramnus BibleMS 6MS 7
Module for Manuscript Description
The module described in this chapter makes available the following
components:
Manuscript DescriptionManuscript DescriptionDescription de manuscrits寫本描述Descrizione di manoscrittiDescrição do manuscrito手書きモジュール
The selection and combination of modules to form a TEI schema is described in
.