News
November 11, 2014
On Friday, November 7, 2014, Benjamin J. Doyle (TAPAS project manager) was invited to speak about the TAPAS project with a group of faculty, staff, and students at the University of Connecticut. TAPAS was included as one of three Northeastern University based digital humanities projects to participate in the “Conversations in Digital Scholarship,” an ongoing discussion series on the digital humanities through UConn’s Scholars Collaborative (http://scholarscollab.uconn.edu/conversations-in-digital-scholarship/). Organized by Anna Kijas , the combined talk, which included topics in “radical” archive practices (Hopwood | ECDA), community building and TEI-based project management (Doyle | TAPAS), and graduate student labor in DH (McGrath | Our Marathon), was live streamed via Google Hangouts: https://plus.google.com/events/c4u298e4lptk9klhg1fla1aomns
TAPAS would like to thank UConn for hosting us. And a special thanks to Anna Kijas (Lead Coordinator, Scholars Collaborative) for organizing the event and including our project.
November 11, 2014
The TAPAS project has just wrapped-up its inaugural TAPAS workshop at the TEI 2014 conference at Northwestern University. We are very pleased with the turn-out for the event, and grateful for the enthusiastic response and feedback we received from the broader TEI community across the conference and from the participants during the workshop. It was a pleasure for all on the TAPAS team to have the opportunity to introduce TAPAS to such a supportive and critically engaged community of TEIrs!
We would like to take this time to acknowledge and thank all who helped make it such a success! A special thanks to the TEI conference committee members for their time and attention in organizing such a wonderful conference and workshop series. Martin Mueller (Professor emeritus of English and Classics | Northwestern University) and Clair Stewart (Head, Digital Collections and Scholarly Communication Services Northwestern University Library) did a wonderful job setting up our workshop location and providing our attendees access to the library. And we were honored to have Paul O’Shea (Digital Humanities PhD Researcher | University College Cork) take time out of his busy schedule as the head of TEIConf2014 social media to attend and live tweet the TAPAS workshop.
We want to thank especially our workshop participants. Their lively engagement and expert feedback throughout the workshop has been invaluable to our team as we continue to develop the TAPAS project to meet the particular needs of a TEI | TAPAS user community. We are already in the process of implementing their suggestions on interface design & functionality, user support services, and community engagement — Stay tuned to these and other developments by following us @tapas_project.
Future TAPAS WorkshopsThe TAPAS project will continue to offer introductory and advanced workshops on TAPAS to its user community and the general public. If you are interested in participating in a future TAPAS workshop, or in hosting one at your institution for your TEI community, please visit our TAPAS Workshops info page for details on workshop formats, scheduling, and pricing.
October 07, 2014
We are very happy to announce that the TAPAS service was formally launched on October 7, 2014 and is now available to the TEI community and the public. The launch brings us to the end of a productive three-year development process, generously funded by the Institute for Museum and Library Services and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Thanks to a number of early adopters, TAPAS is already home to several thriving TEI projects, with more being added every week. To get a sense of how TEI data currently functions within TAPAS, please browse through some of these early projects. If you’d like to try TAPAS with your own texts, you can get started by signing up for a free account, which will allow you to immediately begin adding material to the TAPAS Commons, an area for experimentation and public sharing of TEI data. To create your own projects and collections within TAPAS, you will need a TEI membership, which starts at $50 a year for an individual membership and $250 per year for the “Supporter” level institutional membership. If your institution is already a member of the TEI, you should contact your institution’s TEI membership administrator to link your account to your institution’s TEI membership. For more information on membership in TAPAS, please see our documentation about how to join.
Our next phase of development has already begun with a new NEH grant that supports the addition of an XML-aware repository to TAPAS. In the coming year we will also continue to improve the TAPAS publication mechanisms, develop programs of training and outreach, expand our documentation and user support, and help contributors to build their TEI projects.
We look forward to seeing TAPAS grow, and we invite your engagement, feedback, and contributions! If you have questions about how to use TAPAS or suggestions for future development, we’d be happy to hear from you. Please visit the site’s forums to contribute.
September 26, 2014
The TAPAS project team is excited to announce an inaugural TAPAS workshop to be held on October 25, 2014 immediately following this year’s TEI conference at Northwestern University (October 22-24). This one-day workshop, led by Syd Bauman and Julia Flanders, will introduce participants to the full range of TAPAS services, including archiving and sharing TEI files through the TAPAS commons, experimenting with TEI data through integrated TAPAS data transformation tools, and composing complex TEI projects and collections for publication on the TAPAS site. Conversations and hands-on activities will also focus on topics in metadata, TEI validation and troubleshooting, and incorporating TAPAS into TEI project workflows.
This workshop will be a unique opportunity for current, new, and interested users both to learn about the services of TAPAS as well as to get involved in the TAPAS community. A basic knowledge of TEI will be assumed, though both TEI members and non-members alike are welcome to participate in the workshop.
If you would like to attend this free, one day workshop on TAPAS, please send an email to tei.publishing@gmail.com, with the subject line: Register | October 2014 TAPAS Workshop. Please be sure to include your full name and institutional affiliation if applicable.
We are in the process of designing a TAPAS workshop series to follow. These workshop sessions will guide new and existing TAPAS project teams in TEI project development, large scale data management, and advanced and beginning level use of related XML tools and TEI data experimentation technologies. We are also currently organizing a working group to help expand the functionality of TAPAS for teachers using TEI in the classroom, and foresee a community need for workshops focused on TEI Pedagogy.
We are very interested in hearing from you about how the TAPAS service and workshop series might better facilitate TEI project design, development, preservation, and publication. If you are from, or know of, an institution interested in hosting a TAPAS workshop, please contact us at tei.publishing@gmail.com, with the subject line: Info | TAPAS Workshops. September 26, 2014
We are thrilled to announce that, in preparation for the much awaited public launch of TAPAS (Fall 2014), we have invited TEI project teams to begin using our TEI repository, transformation, and publication services. We would like to welcome this group to the TAPAS community and thank them for contributing to the project! We are very excited by the projects this community of early adopters is developing in TAPAS, projects coming from both North America and Europe. Over the coming months, we will be showcasing each of their projects to highlight the important contributions they are making in their respective fields as well as how future users can make use of the TAPAS services in their own TEI project development.
Keep a look-out for these project highlights via the TAPAS project news page (http://www.tapasproject.org/news) and our twitter account (@tapas_project).
Call to Participate
We are still looking to invite more TEI projects during this pre-launch phase. We also hope to expand our user community to include more projects and teams working outside the U.S. If you are currently developing a TEI project and would like to participate now during the early adopter phase, please contact us (tei.publishing@gmail.com) with the subject heading “Early Adopter.” Please include in your email a brief description of your project as well as any questions or information about the kinds of services and support you hope TAPAS can provide.
For more information on the TAPAS service, please visit http://www.tapasproject.org/about. May 23, 2014
We are delighted to announce that TAPAS has received a new three-year award from the National Endowment for the Humanities to support the development of the TAPAS repository. This $300,000 Preservation and Access grant will enable TAPAS to develop a repository architecture for TAPAS that can serve as a long-term storage mechanism, interact seamlessly with the user interface layer of TAPAS, and provide a basis for complex XML-aware operations such as data analysis and visualization. Under this grant we will build a data storage back end for TAPAS that includes both a Fedora repository (using the Hydra framework) and an XML database, closely integrated with the TAPAS user interface front end so that long-term repository storage, XML publication options, and enhanced searching are a seamless part of the TAPAS interface.
We are now recruiting two new positions to work on this project: an XML applications developer and a web applications developer. These positions are located in the Digital Scholarship Group in the Northeastern University Library and are part of a developer cluster hire that will bring in three new positions to work on the library’s digital repository service and digital scholarly projects. For more information and to apply, please visit
https://neu.peopleadmin.com/postings
and search for jobs within the division of the Library.
This new award dovetails with the completion of our current IMLS and NEH awards, which have funded the initial development of the TAPAS service, and with the formal launch of the TAPAS service in summer 2014. Stay tuned for more information about the launch, coming very soon! March 21, 2014
TAPAS is now entering its second week of this final beta-testing phase. Participants are providing valuable feedback about the usability of the service to help us prepare for launch later this year. It’s not too late to take part in this test; if you are interested in participating please register here: http://bit.ly/ufjOFO.
Participants are following a testing script, performing a series of tasks that include creating a TAPAS account, setting up a project, creating one or more collections, and uploading some TEI data. Test files are available for testers who don’t have TEI data of their own that they’re ready to use.
During the testing phase, participants are providing feedback in discussion forums that we’ve recently added to the site. We have set up discussion threads on specific topics which we want beta testers to focus on. These forums also allow beta testers to provide immediate comments on their experiences and ask questions. After the testing period, the forums will form the hub of the TAPAS user community, providing a space for further testing activities, discussions, community support, and announcements.
The testing process will take place over the course of about two to three weeks. We anticipate that the actual time required from each participant will be approximately 2-3 hours in all.
After this testing phase and some final fixes, we will be inviting users who are interested in being early adopters to create real TAPAS projects to help us populate the service in advance of the formal launch. If you have a TEI project and would like to participate in this pre-launch phase, please let us know at info@tapasproject.org. January 24, 2014
The TEI Archiving, Publishing, and Access Service (TAPAS) is getting close to its public launch in spring 2014. In preparation we are seeking participants to help us with another round of beta testing. We are particularly interested in small to moderate-sized collections of TEI data.
Since our last beta testing period in April 2013, we have refined and expanded our search and exploration interfaces, streamlined the data management workflows, and improved the reading interface. We’ve also done extensive performance testing and enhancement.
Here’s how beta-testers will be involved in the next phase:
In February, beta testers will help testing the new and refined features of the service, identifying any remaining areas that need work before launch. In particular at this stage we are looking for any remaining bugs, missing documentation, or areas where the workflow is confusing.
A small group of faculty will be testing the service through classroom use, so that we can learn more about how the system operates under load and see how the interface works for group projects.
As part of the spring launch, a set of early adopters will set up working TAPAS projects and collections that demonstrate the features of the service.
If you’d like to participate in any of these activities, please register here: http://bit.ly/ufjOFO. If you have registered in the past, you don’t need to register again. We will contact all registered testers when the beta testing period is about to begin with details about how to participate. December 20, 2013
The TAPAS development group met at Brown University for a two day face-to-face meeting to review progress on the site, create a list of final development tasks, and plan for the lead-up to launch. The following institutions were represented at the meeting: Brown University, Hamilton College, Northeastern University, the University of Virginia, Providence College, and Wheaton College.
During the meeting, the development team determined that much of the site is in good shape and planned out the remaining work to be done on improving the site’s performance, creating documentation and user help, clarifying workflows, and creating a better reading interface.
One major outcome of the meeting was a timeline for the launch process. We are currently planning a two-stage launch: a soft launch with access by invitation, and a formal public launch at which the project will be available for general use by TEI members. The soft launch is currently planned for some time in March 2014, and the formal public launch is currently planned for summer 2014. We will have more information available about the soft launch and will be seeking contributors in the new year.
As part of the lead-up to the formal launch we will be conducting a further round of beta-testing to review new interface features and improvements that have been introduced based on the last round of testing. This testing process will be conducted in the same manner as the previous round: we will be inviting members of the TEI community to sign up as beta-testers, and will provide a set of structured tasks with accompanying questions to guide the testing process. Responses and discussion will take place in a discussion forum so that we can ask followup questions about specific issues. If you are interesting in participating in this beta testing phase, please sign up if you have not already. November 01, 2013
As the TAPAS project approaches its soft launch in early 2014, members of TAPAS and the TEI board of directors held a panel presentation at the annual TEI conference in Rome on October 5, 2013 to report on progress and seek feedback from members of the TEI community. Julia Flanders gave an overview of the project's development progress which includes beta-testing, load testing, and improvement of the TEI reading interface in fall 2013. Syd Bauman discussed the process of data profiling and the development of TAPAS schemas. TEI chair Elena Pierazzo described the negotiations between TAPAS and the TEI concerning the possibility of offering TAPAS as a benefit of TEI membership. Following the panel, there was an open discussion in which members of the TEI community were invited to offer feedback and ideas about the development of the service.
One strand of discussion that received especially interesting debate at the meeting was the question of peer review. Peer review of digital humanities projects and digital editions has been challenging to arrange, and there is a felt need within the TEI community for methods of peer review that address the TEI encoding as well as the scholarly content of digital publications. Several audience members suggested that TAPAS should provide or facilitate peer review of TAPAS projects. Several methods were proposed, one of which would allow specific communities to establish peer review standards reflected in formal constraints such as schemas and display stylesheets. These constraints could be built into the TAPAS validation and display system as options that community members could choose. Although this won't be available within TAPAS at launch in 2014, we are interested in exploring the potential for peer review systems within TAPAS in the future, and this may be an opportunity for future grant-writing (perhaps in collaboration with the TEI). Pages
