draft charge to PB workgroup

[Julia Flanders]

To the TEI Council:

Below is a draft charge describing the work of the physical 
bibliography workgroup, which I've also sent to the TEI editors for 
their comments. All comments and suggestions are welcome.

Many thanks--Julia

Charge for the Work Group on Physical Bibliography
April 2004

Domain

This work group is charged with developing guidelines for encoding 
information about the physical structure of printed books: 
specifically, information about how individual pages are located and 
identified within the larger structures of signatures and gatherings. 
The audience being served is fairly narrowly construed as the 
community of descriptive and analytical bibliographers for whom this 
information is essential as a way of documenting the construction of 
the physical book and as the basis for further analysis of printing 
practices and the history of particular editions. While this work 
group is not expected to cover issues specific to manuscript 
documents, its recommendations should not unnecessarily preclude 
their use to encode similar information about manuscript documents, 
and to this end this work group is expected to maintain communication 
with the Manuscript Description work group and to review the 
materials they have already produced in this area.

Objectives

1. Review notes and documents prepared by Manuscript Description work 
group concerning collation.

2. Review the needs and practices of those parts of the TEI community 
(and relevant parts  of the potential TEI community: i.e. those who 
would use the TEI if it included provision for this kind of encoding) 
likely to use facilities for encoding collation and physical document 
structure.

3. Propose a detailed work plan to improve and extend upon the 
recommendations currently provided by TEI P4 in these areas. The work 
plan will be determined by agreement of the working group but is 
expected to address at least the following:

--provision for encoding basic structural information about each page 
in the document (i.e. its identification with respect to the 
collation of the entire document), this information being associated 
directly with the individual page;

--provision for encoding a summary of structural information about 
the document as a whole (i.e. an equivalent of a collational formula, 
encoded in the TEI header);

--provision for several types of commentary on the physical document 
structure (e.g. information, both structured and unstructured, such 
as measurements, identification, and description of features of paper 
or typography; summaries of printing history; identification of 
cancels, etc.);

--provision for several types of derived analytical perspectives on 
the physical document structure (e.g. reconstructions of individual 
formes, bifolia, other higher-order structures) using stand-off 
markup (e.g. <join>), and provision for where this information should 
be located within the encoded document;

--in concert with the Manuscript Description workgroup, harmonization 
of treatment of collation and physical document structure for printed 
books and manuscripts, at least to ensure that no redundant or 
incompatible recommendations are made in either section of the 
Guidelines.

4. Respond to comments on relevant other work that may be routed to 
this work group by the editors.

Administrative

The chair of the work group is Terry Catapano. The TEI Editors are ex 
officio members of all TEI Work Groups. Other constraints and 
procedures  applicable to all TEI work groups are described in 
document TEI  EDW54. The group has a budget of USD 250 for the year 
ending 2004, during which no meetings are authorized, but conference 
calls are expected to take place.

The work group is required to provide progress reports on its work 
regularly to the TEI Technical Council, which has authority for 
approving all technical output from the work group.

The work group will meet regularly by conference call, and will 
communicate by mailing list.

<p>Deadlines [TBD following guidance from the TEI Council]

A preliminary work plan to be prepared by May 12 in time for the TEI 
Council meeting on May 13-14 2004
A first draft of recommendations for revisions required to P4 to be 
prepared by [fall TEI Council conference call?  September 2004?]
The final report from the work group should be completed by [date 
required for inclusion in P5? 31 October 2004?]