Using TEI to Catalog Syriac Manuscripts

Syriaca.org publishes its manuscript catalog information in XML, using the TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) Guidelines. This means our data is compatible with many other projects, as well as machine-readable, making powerful searches and collaboration possible.

If you are interested in encoding information about Syriac manuscripts in TEI, the following tutorials are for you. The example used is from vol. 1 of William Wright's Catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the British museum acquired since the year 1838 , which may be downloaded from archive.org here. You can find the TEI template file used in the tutorials here. The XML editor used in the tutorials is Oxygen XML Editor, but you may use any other XML editor or even a simple text editor. The "Word file" referred to in the videos is a Microsoft Word document containing the text of Wright's manuscript catalog. Any word processor or text editor may be used instead.

Note: These videos were originally created for Syriaca.org internal staff training and refer to training materials prepared at that time. These materials are subject to change and/or may not be kept up to date.

1. Editing the teiHeader section
2. Entering identifying information in the msDesc section
3. Describing the work contained in the manuscript in the msContents section
4. Physical Description (physDesc) Part I: Entering the object description in objectDesc
5. Physical Description (physDesc) Part II: Entering scribal information in handDesc and additions
6. Entering the manuscript history and wrap-up
7. Video Transcript