Content Modelling / Needs Analysis Assignment

This assignment asks you to determine what matters about a collection of documents (i.e., a collection that contains documents of a specific type). You will write up a description of the documents and a discussion of what research questions one might ask of the document collection. You will then encode your description and discussion in DocBook, one of the XML languages that we will study this term.

Potential Document Collections or Datasets

Find a coherent set of documents that interests you. It can be any collection of documents that is cohesive, consistent, and time limited. The collection can be literary, historical, political, or scientific. It can come from any time period or any domain of human endeavour. If you are at a loss, here are two ideas:

  1. A collection of 18th-century exhibition catalogues. From the Society of Artists of Great Britain. Examples available electronically.
  2. Theatre reviews or book reviews from three major international newspapers (e.g., The New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail,and the London Times). Document collection should span three decades.

Writing

Write a description of the documents (750-1000 words) using headers, sections, paragraphs, lists, and tables as seems appropriate to the material. In your description, answer the following questions:

  • What are the documents?
  • Who wrote them and when?
  • Whom are they for?
  • In what format were they published/released?
  • What information do they contain?
  • How are these documents structured? Are there sections, chapters, divisions, headers, paragraphs, quotations, lines, stanzas, songs, tables, lists?
  • Are there any obvious hierarchical relationships in the document? E.g., chapters containing sections containing paragraphs?
  • Are there any significant bibliographical features that you’d want to capture?
  • Titles, page numbers, running titles, footers, headers, colophons, tables of contents, credits?
  • What sort of materials do they contain other than text? Images, advertisements, mastheads, logos?

Add a discussion (250 words) of what research questions one might answer via these documents and what needs to be described in the encoding of these documents in order to answer those questions. In other words, what needs to be encoded for you or someone else to process it later? (Wise words from Martin Holmes: “Do not omit in your encoding anything you will later rely on in your processing or rendering.”)

Encoding

Encode your written description and discussion in a single XML file (.xml). Use the Balisage customization of DocBook. Requirements for your XML file:

  • It must be valid against the Balisage schema (the .rng file).
  • It must be rooted on the <article> element.
  • It must have a <title> element with a meaningful title.
  • It must have complete metadata captured in the <info> element.
  • The <info> element must have these children elements with appropriate information in the text nodes, and those children must have any child elements required by the schema.
    • <abstract>
    • <author>
  • Your submission must have at least two <section> elements and all required child elements of <section>.
  • Your submission must have a <bibliography> element with at least one child <bibliomixed> element with appropriate content.
  • Your submission must have at least one <citation> element that points to an item in the bibliography.
  • Your submission must use at least one of these elements to present information: <table>, <informaltable>, or <itemizedlist>.
  • Your XML file must have a filename without spaces! Use underscores and/or camelCase.

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

Sources: Document all your sources (whether you quote from them or not) so as to give credit where credit is due and to allow me (your reader) to find your sources. MLA citation style is usually adequate, but you aren’t obligated to use MLA as long as you observe my Three Rules of Citation. If you cite digital resources, give the DOI (Digital Object Identifier) for articles/books, the project name for digital projects/tools, or the URL for any webpage that I might not be able to find easily.

How to submit: Upload an XML file to Brightspace AND email me your XML file in a zipped folder (just in case Brightspace won’t accept XML).

GRADING

25% for selection of documents, research, and citation of sources

25% for the insights provided in your description and discussion

25% for mechanics and style of your writing

25% for mastery of technical skills (encoding, filenaming, using Balisage customization creatively and professionally to present your work)