Blog #4

Learning TEI-compliant XML markup and applying it to my transcription enabled me to see my transcription in a new way. While the past two modules had me looking at my transcription through distant reading, the TEI-complaint XML markup had me paying attention to every single word once again. However, while this new view allowed me to closely look at every word, I also had to pay attention to the larger context in which the words were placed. By paying attention to the larger context in which the words were places, I was able to interpret what I thought Joseph Lingard was saying, while also trying to correctly tag the transcription. 

Within my team, we created a set of rules within a Google Doc about how we were tagging our transcriptions. As Pierazzo states, our group had to ask ourselves, “Which features of the primary source are we to reproduce in order to be sure that we are following ‘best practice’? Are there any shared guidelines to inform our choices? Where shall we stop?” (Pierazzo, 4). Some examples of decisions we made were if to tag “Lord”, “Jesus” and “Savior” as a person (which we agreed to) and whether to tag specific churches as an organization or as a place. My group largely agreed with one another with these tagging decisions, so there was little dispute and resulting tension. However, making these decisions about how to tag the document made the document more personal to our group. Specifically, as Pierazzo explains, “Arguably some of the choices made by the editors can be motivated both by the purpose of the edition and by the needs of the readers, and one might also argue that making an accessible edition is one purpose of the edition” (Pierazzo, 8). Our decisions were made with both our group’s purpose and the larger need of the future readers in mind. With reference to Pierazzo’s point, our document was subjected to our own personal interpretation and could arguably be interpreted very differently if it were tagged by another group in HUMN 100. Additionally, Pierazzo explains, “The challenge is therefore to select those limits that allow a model which is adequate to the scholarly purpose for which it has been created” (Pierazzo, 5). I would agree with Pierazzo that at times it was a challenge for my group to know if we were tagging our transcriptions “correctly”. We sometimes worried that if we were to make mistakes now, it would have large implications for future research. In the end, making these crucial decisions as a team brought us closer to both each other and our transcriptions.