1. Rethinking historical research in the digital age:
A TEI approach
Camille Desenclos
(École nationale des chartes – Équipe d'accueil 3624)
2012, 9th october. – IHR Digital History Seminar

2. manuscript
How managing the support transfer?
printed
paper published
dematerialised

3. Modification of the historian work
 Take benefit of the digital technologies by choosing them, not by
suffering them
 What relationship between historical research and computing tools?
E. Le Roy-Ladurie, “tomorrow's historian will be programmer or won't be” (1967)
-> rather dialoguing with the computer sicentist
 Danger of a overcomputerisation
=> keep the research in the heart of the historian work

4. Modification of the relationship with sources
 Closer relationship
=> Precision required by digital technologies: understand the
nature and meaning of the source.
How operate the transition from a manuscript source to a
dematerialised tool?
=> source now as access point to informations.
=> edition's issue: conserve the integrity of the source but with a
segmenting, semantic encoding (TEI).

5. Why should we face to this?
The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI)
 Need of a structured language
 Dedicated to the representation of text in digital
form
 A tool not only for publication but as well for data
structuring

6. Correspondences as perfect of the issues of
digital transition
Two examples
 Correspondence of the chancellor Antoine du Bourg
(http://elec.enc.sorbonne.fr/dubourg/)
1535-1538, 1200 letters.
Stakes: - give back the coherency to a mass of informations
- collaborative project
 Correspondence of the extraordinary embassy of the duke
of Angoulême (still in development)
1620-1621, 87 letters.
Stakes: - give back the coherency
- manage a huge critical apparatus

7. What rendering? TEI edition as publication
HTML vs TEI
=> edition: transition from a publication tool to a real study object

8. What added-values ? TEI edition as study object
New scientific thinking by using TEI: highlighting the datas and thinking about their historical utilisation
Example of names identification
<persName xml:id="l-1-HenriII" ref="#HenriII-Lorraine">duc de Lorraine</persName>
Normalised form Other references
<person xml:id="HenriII-Lorraine" corresp="#l-I-HenriII-Lorraine #l-1-HenriII #l-2-HenriII #l-4-HenriII #l-6-HenriII">
<persName>Henri II le Bon de Lorraine</persName>
<birth>1563</birth>
<death>1624</death>
<state>
<p>duc de Lorraine</p> Whole identification
</state>
<event>
<p>Il fait ses premières armes par la poursuite et la défaite des troupes allemandes qui étaient
entrées en Lorraine et en France pour le secours des protestants lors des guerres de religion. Cependant après la
défenestration de Prague, il garde une position neutre et tente de jouer un rôle d'apaisement auprès des différents
belligérants.</p>
</event>
</person>
=> link directly the name to the text and its context
=> study aim: network reconstitution

9. What added-values? TEI as study object
Example of critical apparatus
- lemma identification

10. What added-values? TEI as study object
Example of critical apparatus
- Establishment of a typology
Major TEI elements
<app>: classic variants Some examples
<add>: addition
<del>: suppression <subst>
<subst>: correction within the source <del>monsieur de Preaux et moy</del>
<supplied>: supplied text <add place="margin">monsieur d'Angoulesme
<gap>: text omitted in the source et de Preaux</add>
<choice>: correction by the editor </subst>
<unclear> : text partly illegible
a<supplied source="#l-54-B" reason="damaged-
margin">yons escript</supplied>
Major TEI attributes
@ reason <choice>
@ extent <sic>28</sic>
@ place <corr source="#l-40-C #l-40-D #l-40-E #l-40-F
@ source #l-40-G #l-40-H">18</corr>
</choice>

11. TEI impact on research
 think not about text flow but about semantic units, historical informations
=> necessity of an study aim
=> collaborative work: research in motion
 To a direct relationship manuscript-digital without the paper transition?
=> native TEI edition
=> create a real semantic encoding
 But TEI isn't a wonderful world: what was impossible doesn't become automatically possible
=> example of ciphering
ŋ ?
=> loss of informations makes a close relationship to sources even more useful

12. Thank you for your attention!
For any further questions: camille.desenclos@enc.sorbonne.fr