Subject: Fwd: The Future of the TEI
David Green (david@ninch.org)
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 09:25:59 -0500
Message-Id: <v04011707b21455f69af1@[192.100.21.23]> Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1998 09:25:59 -0500 To: ninch-announce@cni.org From: David Green <david@ninch.org> Subject: Fwd: The Future of the TEI
NINCH ANNOUNCEMENT
September 3, 1998
THE FUTURE OF THE TEXT ENCODING INITIATIVE
Call for Bids to Host a Consortium for Longer-Term Support
<http://www.uic.edu/orgs/tei>
>Date: Thu, 03 Sep 1998
>From: C M Sperberg-McQueen <cmsmcq@uic.edu>
>Subject: the future of the TEI
>
>As some readers of this list may be aware, the work of the Text
>Encoding Initiative (TEI) has depended on short-term grant funds ever
>since the project began in late 1987. While appropriate for a research
>project, short term funding is not a secure foundation for the
>continued maintenance and development of a standard. The TEI's
>executive committee has therefore been considering alternative options
>for long-term support of the TEI for some time now. Its current
>intention is to encourage the establishment of some form of
>membership-based consortium in order to secure ongoing funding and
>organizational support for the TEI.
>
>The purpose of this note is to inform potentially interested members
>of the TEI community about this proposal, to solicit bids for hosting
>such a consortium, and to initiate a wider debate about the future of
>the TEI.
>
>Note: If your institution is interested in bidding to host a TEI
>consortium, please contact C. M. Sperberg-McQueen at tei@uic.edu as
>soon as possible. Preliminary discussion with some potential hosts is
>already underway, with the intention of making a final decision in
>January 1999.
>
>More information about the TEI is available from its public discussion
>list at tei-l@listserv.uic.edu and its website at
><http://www.uic.edu/orgs/tei>; additional background information
>relating to the consortium proposal is given below.
>
>------
>
>Background information
>
>The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) is an international cooperative
>effort to develop and disseminate guidelines for the encoding and
>interchange of machine-readable texts for research. Sponsored by the
>Association for Computers and the Humanities (ACH), the Association
>for Computational Linguistics (ACL), and the Association for Literary
>and Linguistic Computing (ALLC), the TEI began in 1988, published
>drafts of its work in 1990 and 1992-93 for comment, and published the
>Guidelines for Text Encoding and Interchange (TEI P3) in May 1994.
>Since 1994, the TEI has largely concentrated on dissemination
>activities, such as workshops and publications. Its proposals are
>internationally recognized as essential material for anyone currently
>considering serious academic work with electronic texts of any
>kind.
>
>However, its Guidelines are now, after four years, in serious need of
>revision and extension. A new round of technical work was carried out
>in 1996-7, largely relying on volunteer effort and residual
>funding. This work has yet to be published. In addition, the TEI has
>recently chartered several new work groups to address in depth some
>specific subject areas in which the existing Guidelines are clearly
>incomplete or inadequate. A formal mechanism exists for these groups
>to report their recommendations, but incorporating them into a
>revision of the Guidelines will require further editorial and
>dissemination effort.
>
>As one specific example, the TEI has been heavily involved in the
>development of the Extensible Markup Language (XML) and related
>specifications. The editors of the TEI both participated in the
>design of XML, and one also served as a co-editor of the XML
>specification; the TEI's extended-pointer notation has been taken as
>the basis for the Xpointer language; the TEI's tag-set documentation
>will be part of the input to the deliberations of the new XML Schema
>and Datatyping Work Group sponsored by the World Wide Web
>Consortium. Yet while there has been uch discussion of the need to
>adjust the current TEI DTD o take account of XML and related
>specifications, and although the relevant TEI work group has begun
>identifying the required technical changes, no infrastructure exists
>for publication and dissemination of the results of that work.
>
>Over the last ten years, the Text Encoding Initiative has been funded
>through grants from the U.S. National Endowment for the Humanities, an
>independent federal agency; Directorate General XIII of the Commission
>of the European Union; the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; and the Social
>Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada. The TEI cannot
>rely indefinitely on such generosity, and in particular we do not
>believe that it can or should continue in the absence of a reliable
>and well-funded publishing and maintenance infrastructure. By far the
>greatest contribution to the TEI's success, however, has been the
>generous donation of time and expertise by the scores of researchers
>who have served without compensation on TEI work groups and technical
>committees; they and their host institutions have provided an
>incalculable contribution to the preparation and dissemination of the
>Guidelines. Their generosity, too, can best be put to use by a
>TEI possessed of a reliable infrastructure.
>
>As originally conceived, the TEI was expected to remain in existence
>only as long as necessary for its Guidelines to be published, to be
>used then by anyone interested in so doing. The Memorandum of
>Understanding between the three sponsoring organizations which set up
>the TEI makes reference to the need for some sort of maintenance
>scheme for the Guidelines, but does not elaborate how it might be set
>up.
>
>It seems clear that the maintenance of complex technical
>specifications like the TEI Guidelines is hard or impossible with at
>least some level of ongoing technical and editorial work. Editorial
>work must be funded, and there are inevitable travel costs both in the
>development work, and in the dissemination activities necessary to
>keep the TEI Guidelines up to date and usable by the community they
>were created to benefit. The organizational structure of the TEI,
>originally intended for a fixed-term project, must also be adapted to
>serve its new role as an ongoing service effort.
>
>The TEI executive committee has been discussing these issues for some
>time and has tentatively concluded that an appropriate funding model
>would be to establish a membership-based consortium, the object of
>which will be to support the ongoing maintenance and development of
>the TEI as well as to organize related dissemination activities. The
>exact focus of such a consortium, the likely scope of its activities,
>and its relationship with the original sponsoring organizations are
>all yet to be determined. The executive committee seeks input from the
>community of those engaged in computer-assisted work with textual
>material, to confirm this decision and to help decide the many
>questions it leaves unanswered.
>
>Many thanks to all who have supported the TEI in the past; we hope,
>with your help and continued support, to build on the TEI's success,
>making it an even more useful tool for all those interested in the
>creation and reuse of textual resources.
>
>-C. M. Sperberg-McQueen
>University of Illinois at Chicago
>
>-Lou Burnard
>Oxford University
>
>
>__________________________________________
>
>Paul J. Constantine
>Head, Reference Services Division
>Olin-Kroch-Uris Libraries
>Cornell University
>106D Olin Library
>Ithaca, NY 14853
>
>E-mail: pjc6@cornell.edu
>Telephone: (607) 255-3319
>
===============================================================
David L. Green
Executive Director
NATIONAL INITIATIVE FOR A NETWORKED CULTURAL HERITAGE
21 Dupont Circle, NW
Washington DC 20036
www-ninch.cni.org
david@ninch.org
202/296-5346 202/872-0886 fax
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