136060 UE Digital Edition (2024W)

What is a digital edition and how do you actually create one? Producing editions to make sources accessible is one of the most fundamental tasks of cultural studies. The introduction of digital methods opens up new possibilities especially in the field of editing, which not only lead to new forms of representation, but can also fundamentally question our print-age understanding of textuality, authorship, work contexts, etc.

The course will cover the basic steps (preferably hands-on) that are important for the creation of a digital edition (indexing and transcription of the source, coding with TEI, transformations and web representations with XPath, XQuery and existDB or alternatives with static HTML and Javascript, collation programs, highlighting and standardised labelling of entities, use of Large Language Models (LLMs) in the creation of editions). The methods learnt will be related to fundamental conceptual and theoretical questions of editing.

With the help of these skills, participants will complete their own small editing project (with their own or provided material).

What is learnt:
- Reflective knowledge of basic theoretical editorial concepts and effects of the digitisation for editorial studies
- Discussion of basic (digital) editorial concepts and methods (text indexing, structural markup, markup, data models, transformation)
- The ability to prepare your own small editing project and to critically reflect on the use of methods appropriate to your research question.

Please bring your own laptop (with internet access) for the practical work! No previous knowledge is necessary.