Syriaca.org Schema Customizations

Table of Contents

Overview

ODD Chaining

The Srophé ODD

The Syriaca All ODD

The Syriaca Places ODD

Overview

Syriaca.org is a Linked Open Data (LOD) oriented project using the Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) standard of XML to encode data about core entities (persons, places, works, manuscripts, and bibliography) relevant to the field of Syriac Studies. Syriaca.org uses the TEI because it offers a widely-used standard for humanities projects and because it allows us to capture the nuances of the textual source base we draw upon when encoding data. The LOD-oriented nature of the project, especially the fact that Syriaca.org does not focus on the encoding of texts but rather focuses on the encoding of LOD derived from texts, means that Syriaca.org's use of the TEI is somewhat idiosyncratic.

Syriaca.org's research goals have also required the development of the Srophé Application, an open source eXist-DB application for TEI projects dealing with Cultural Heritage Information. As more and more projects begin to use the Srophé App, users have expressed interest in having a customized TEI schema that will facilitate the encoding of data in ways that the Srophé App expects.

The project has required the creation of a series of customized schemas that can be applied to the different data types required for the entities listed above.

For a more detailed discussion of TEI schema customization, see the chapters on "Documentation Elements" and "Using the TEI" in the TEI Guidelines.