The Summer 2010 EpiDoc training workshop will now take place in London, at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, King’s College London, from June 28 – July 1. Thanks to the generosity of the Association Internationale d’Épigraphie Grecque et Latine (AIEGL) we have €500 available for bursaries to help students attend this event. The workshop will be taught by Gabriel Bodard (KCL) and James Cowey (Heidelberg). There will be no charge to attend this workshop.
From the workshop description:
This course will introduce attendees to EpiDoc markup, an XML schema for epigraphic and papyrological editions. The workshop is targeted at Classical scholars: we shall assume knowledge of Greek and/or Latin and some experience in Classical history or adjacent disciplines, but no technical expertise is required. We shall introduce students to the use of EpiDoc markup to record the distinctions expressed by the Leiden Conventions and traditional critical editions, and some of the issues in translating between EpiDoc and the major epigraphic and papyrological databases.
Students will also be given hands-on experience in the use of the “Son of SOL” editing tool (SoSOL), currently implemented by the Duke Databank of Documentary Papyri, which facilitates the creation of validating EpiDoc XML via a “tags-free” interface. EpiDoc is a standard for the encoding of ancient texts, originally drawn up by and for epigraphic projects (the Inscriptions of Aphrodisias, Vindolanda Tablets, US Epigraphy, and others). While the SoSOL tool is currently operational on a papyrological dataset, training in its use is directly applicable to the epigraphic community. For one thing, SoSOL is already being modified for use by epigraphical projects, but more importantly, it functions at a level of abstraction that invites the user to think not in terms of papyrological or epigraphic conventions for displaying, e.g. orthographic variants, but rather in terms of the underlying semantic meaning. In other words, the tool furnishes, in addition to its practical applications, a pedagogical bridge between the print page, with which students are still conditioned to think, and the full sophistication and explicitness of EpiDoc markup.
To apply to attend the EpiDoc and SoSOL workshop, or for more information, please send an email as soon as possible to gabriel.bodard@kcl.ac.uk; if you would like to apply for a partial bursary to help cover your travel and/or accommodation costs, please indicate this in the same email and give a brief account of your circumstances (student status, funding available, distance to be travelled, etc.).
