Encoding of bibliographic references using bibl, including guidelines for identifying bibliographic references and when not to encode them.
The WWP uses bibl as described in TEI to encode bibliographic references to works outside the text. However, our use of it is generally limited to cases where references are structurally distinct (such as references associated with epigraphs or block quotations), grouped together in lists (such as in bibliographies, endnotes, or other systematic lists of texts and authors), or where the reference has both the form and the content of a complete bibliographic reference. We also use bibl to encode bibliographic information in advertisements. We do not use bibl to encode casual references to authors and titles which occur in running prose or in passing, even if they are associated with a quotation. In such cases we use title and persName as appropriate. In cases where a casual citation includes information about both title and page number or chapter/verse, we encode the title and leave the other information unencoded. The only exception is standard Biblical and classical references, which are encoded with regMe only (no title or other internal encoding except sic or orig for typos and vuji for old-style v, u, j and i).
Examples of potential uses of bibl would be: footnotes, marginal notes, parenthetical references associated with quotations, bibliography entries, citations accompanying epigraphs, and other explicit (often imperative) references to the text as a source for information or quotation.
Within bibl, we encode the author’s name (if present) using author with persName nested inside. We encode the title (if present) with title.
In cases where a citation includes more than one page reference within a given source (e.g. Revelations 2, 3, 6, 17), we encode the entire group within a single bibl.
Our criteria for encoding a reference with bibl are as follows:
1. Completeness: to be tagged with bibl, a reference needs to contain enough information to be useful (so that the user doesn’t just get a list of naked page references).
2. Separability: to be tagged with bibl, a reference needs to be syntactically separable from the text: usually by being set off with parentheses/commas/brackets/dashes, and by being unnecessary for the syntactic completeness of the surrounding text. Thus “In Aviarius, _Whortfeld the Miser_, lines 1-13 are unmistakeably echoes of Middleton” does not qualify, because the bibliographic information is embedded in the sentence rather than separated from it. However, in the following example the reference is separated and would be encoded with bibl:
We may contemplate with pleasure his “footfalls few” (Spondee,
_Inamorata_, p. 31)
3. Purity: to be tagged with bibl, a reference must contain nothing except reference information. This does not mean that no #PCDATA at all can be present in a bibl (things like punctuation and whitespace may be present), only that all character data should contribute to the reference. Descriptive phrases, etc., are right out. E.g.:
"The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it. By contrast, the GNU General Public License license is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software. (Free Software Foundation, in that most excellent hack of copyright law, _The GNU Public License_.)"
wouldn’t warrant a bibl, but “... (Free Software Foundation, _The GNU Public License_, preamble paragraph 1)” would. Currently, even a single preposition is enough to demote a phrase into non-bibl status, but we’re a little uncomfortable with this. For although “By William Shakespeare, in his play _Henry IV_, in the third act” is certainly not bibl, (and “Henry IV, III.ii.2” certainly is bibl), one could argue that “(Act III scene ii in _Henry IV_)” deserves bibl. This criterion should probably be taken together with the “separability” criterion, since references which are continuous with the surrounding text will more likely have other words embedded in them, while those which are separable are more likely to be pure as well. If a reference is separable, a small degree of impurity is tolerable.
The bibliographic information that is given in the text should be fully encoded inside a bibl using title, author, publisher, biblScope (for page numbers), etc. The only exception to this rule is where regMe is used to encode standard Biblical and classical references. In these cases, the only internal tagging needed is sic (for typographical errors) and vuji (for vuji).
When the WWP starts to encode links to other texts, we will use xref to encode references to works to which an electronic link is made, and bibl to encode references to works to which no such link is made. (See also 070 on xref.)See also cit