The McGill library chapbook project: a case study in TEI encoding

Purpose – The purpose of this case study is to describe a multi-year text encoding initiative (TEI) project that took place in the McGill University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections. Design/methodology/approach – Early nineteenth century English language chapbooks from the collection were digitized, and the proofed text files were encoded in TEI, following Best Practices for TEI in Libraries (2011). Findings – The project coordinator describes the TEI file structure and customizations for the project to support a distinct subject classification of the chapbooks and the encoding of the woodcut illustrations using the Iconclass classification. Research limitations/implications – The authors focus on procedures, use of TEI data elements and encoding challenges. Practical implications – This paper documents the project workflow and provides a possible model for future digital humanities projects. Social implications – The graduate students who participated in the TEI encoding learned a new suite of skills involving extensible markup language (XML) file structure and the application of a markup language that requires interpretation. Originality/value – The McGill Library Chapbook Project Web site, launched in 2013 now provides access to 933 full-text works.