[tei-council] facsimile odd -- what is a facsimile?
Lou Burnard
lou.burnard at computing-services.oxford.ac.uk
Mon Jul 23 06:27:02 EDT 2007
Thanks Dot for your comments. If I may, I'd like to address what seem to
be the chief issues in separate messages. I will start with the one I
feel more strongly about than the others.
Dot Porter wrote:
>
LB >> a) I don't think this element belongs in sourceDesc. If <pg> contains
>> the images constituting a digital facsimile, then it isn't metadata
>> about that facsimile, it *is* the facsimile. I might want to record in
>> the sourceDesc other things (e.g. where I nicked the images from) which
>> wouldn't form part of the facsimile proper.
>
> CT>But to my mind, the tei:pg elements ARE descriptions of the source
> CT>material. I could be misinterpreting this though, I admit.
>
> I'm with Conal on this, I think. sourceDesc is a description of the
> source material. "Source material" could be a manuscript, a scroll, a
> gravestone, what have you. A facsimile of the source is not the same
> thing as the source - a facsimile is metadata about the source.
The syllogism seems to be:
* A facsimile is not the same thing as the source.
* Metadata is not the same thing as the source.
* Therefore A facsimile is metadata.
But of course this is a fine example of an "undistributed middle"!
One of my most prized books is the Hinman facsimile edition of the First
Folio. This hefty volume consists of page images of the 1623 folio, with
modern metadata (line numbering) added, modern (well, early 20th c.)
introductory matter, title page, back matter etc. It also has its own
metadata -- who printed it, when and where -- quite distinct from the
information about Isaac Iaggard and others responsible for the 1623
volume which it reproduces. For example, like other facsimile editions,
this one makes a fairly eclectic selection from the available surviving
first folio sources -- it doesn't claim to reproduce any specific copy,
but tells you which copies have been used for which pages. Even in the
case where there is a unique original, as Andrew Prescott tells us,
facsimiles can vary greatly in their relationship to it, and thus there
is always some degree of description needed about the facsimile itself,
distinct from the source it purports to represent.
In fact, it seems to me the relationship between a transcription of a
source and the original is almost identical to the relationship between
a facsimile of it and the original. One translates a reading letter by
letter, and the other translates a reading dot by dot, but they are both
readings and as such I would like to give them the same ontological
standing in my encoding.
In addition to this philosophical argument, let us not forget that for
every one TEI-encoded digital text out there, there are probably a
thousand digital facsimiles. Surely the TEI ought to be offering a way
of encoding digital facsimile editions as well as digital
transcriptions? There are quite a few places where the TEI Header is
used to stock metadata about both kinds of digital object. Wouldn't it
be nice to offer a way of growing one kind into the other without doing
violence to the basic TEI model?
If we are going to have markup which describes the page images
themselves, as digital objects, then the set of page images constituting
a work isa kind of "text" itself and should be treated as such. In
short: my proposal is
a) add a new element <facsimile> (or better word if we can think of one)
b) change the content model of <TEI> and of <group> to permit
(text|facsimile) where they currently permit <text>
Note that I am not proposing a class model.textLike because I cannot
think of any other kind of thing that might go in there -- I'd suggest
that talking books, if we want to digitize them, are another form of
facsimile.
DP: I'd
> say that <pg> does belong in sourceDesc, however this doesn't mean it
> doesn't also make sense to have it at the same level as <text>.
> Perhaps it should be allowed in both places? Similar to msDescription,
> where you can have them both in the header and in the body.
>
I can see why the "bung em in the header" policy is convenient, for
example in the case where you just have a few page images to illustrate
particularly vexing parts of your manuscript, so I am ready to concede
this as a possibility. But I still think it's Wrong with a capital R.
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