Four basic sections:

<fileDesc>

Publication info about the electronic file and its source The only mandatory header section

<encodingDesc>

Information about the encoding of the file

<profileDesc>

Information about the participants, people described in the file

<revisionDesc>

Information about the revision history of the file

<fileDesc>

3 mandatory elements:

<titleStmt>: title, author, other responsible parties <publicationStmt>: publication info <sourceDesc>: information about the source (if any)

Other optional elements:

<notesStmt> <extent>

<sourceDesc>

Simple approach: <bibl>

Free prose description, with optional elements: <author>, <title>, <imprint>, etc.

Library approach: <biblStruct>

Structured set of bibliographic elements Specified ordering

TEI-ish approach: <biblFull>

Structured approach that mirrors the TEI <fileDesc> Good for documenting things derived from electronic files

<encodingDesc>

A set of declarations describing the transcription, editing, and encoding of the text

<projectDesc>: info about the project <samplingDecl>: how the data was chosen or sampled <editorialDecl>: details of editing: hyphenation, regularization, quotation, correction of errors <tagsDecl>: what tags are used in the file, and how they are rendered A few others which are more arcane�

<profileDesc>

Descriptive information about a corpus

<creation>: Its creation <textClass>: classification of the text by some method <langUsage>: the languages used in the text, using the <language> element <particDesc>: the identifiable speakers in the text (linguistic) <handList>: the handwriting that appears in the text (esp. for manuscripts, using the <hand> element

<revisionDesc>

Just a series of <change> elements

Documenting relevant/meaningful changes to the file

Good as a way of tracking workflow