C H O I C E S

You can encode (mark up) almost anything.
But what should you encode?

And to what depth?

Your choices will be dictated by ...

• the nature of the material
• the character of your incoming data
• the amount of your funding
• the patience of your funders
• (how much time left till your retirement)
• the scale of the project (how many items)
• the scope and variety of the project
• the purpose of the project
  • desired functionality
  • expected (or guessed-at) audience
  • potential for repurposing
  • potential for sharing/reuse
• your own knowledge or ignorance
• the existence of standards
  • why to avoid them. They are:
    • complex, hard to use
    • not tailored to material
    • not supported by local expertise or compatible with local systems
    • not as good as what you can come up with yourself
    • etc.?
  • why to use them. You can
    • leverage community expertise
    • share data
    • share tools
    • entertain at least a faint hope of "sustainability"
  • example: library GUIDELINES

Our own projects as examples:

• The Text Creation Partnership
• Middle English Dictionary (and Compendium)
• Knight's American Mechanical Dictionary
• The Faculty CV project

These differ in

• their adherence to standards
• their longevity (the price of success)
• their scale and scope

But share a common rationale:

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