Cataloging/EAD/Etext/XML courses at Virginia (RBS) Rare Book School 29 Jan 2003 16:24 UTC

[Cross-posted. Please excuse any duplication.]

RARE BOOK SCHOOL is pleased to announce its Spring and Summer 2003
Sessions, a collection of five-day, non-credit courses on topics concerning
rare books, manuscripts, the history of books and printing, and special
collections to be held at the University of Virginia.

FOR AN APPLICATION FORM and electronic copies of the complete brochure and
Rare Book School expanded course descriptions, providing additional details
about the courses offered and other information about Rare Book School,
visit our Web site at

                http://www.rarebookschool.org

Subscribers to the list may find the following Rare Book School courses to
be of particular interest:

23. ADVANCED DESCRIPTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY. (MONDAY-FRIDAY, MARCH 3-7). A
continuation and extension of Introduction to Descriptive Bibliography
(G-10), this course is based on the intensive examination of a
representative range of books from the c16-c19. The goal of the course is
to deepen students' familiarity with the physical composition of books; to
gain further experience in the use of Fredson Bowers' Principles of
Bibliographical Description; and to consider critically some of the uses of
Bowers' method (and its limitations) in the production of catalogs,
bibliographies, critical editions, and histories of books and reading.
Instructor: Richard Noble.

RICHARD NOBLE is Rare Books Cataloguer at the John Hay Library, Brown
University. He is co-author (with Joan Crane) of Guy Davenport: A
Descriptive Bibliography 1947-1995 (1996), and co-editor of The Dramatic
Works of George Lillo (1993). He has taught this Rare Book School course
twice since 1999.

24. ELECTRONIC TEXTS & IMAGES. (MONDAY-FRIDAY, MARCH 3-7). A practical
exploration of the research, preservation, editing, and pedagogical uses of
electronic texts and images in the humanities. The course will center
around the creation of a set of archival-quality etexts and digital images,
for which we shall also create an Encoded Archival Description guide.
Topics include: SGML tagging and conversion; using the Text Encoding
Initiative Guidelines; the form and implications of XML; publishing on the
World Wide Web; and the management and use of online texts. Some experience
with HTML is a prerequisite for admission to the course. Instructor: David
Seaman

DAVID SEAMAN became Director of the Digital Library Federation in 2002. He
was the founding director of the internationally-known Electronic Text
Center and on-line archive at the University of Virginia.

64. RARE BOOK CATALOGING (MONDAY-FRIDAY, 28 JULY - 1 AUGUST). Aimed at
catalog librarians who find that their present duties include (or shortly
will include) the cataloging of rare books or special collections
materials. Attention will be given primarily to cataloging books from the
hand-press period, with some discussion given to c19 and c20 books in a
special collections context. Topics include: comparison of rare book and
general cataloging; application of codes and standards (especially DCRB);
uses of special files; problems in transcription, collation and physical
description; and setting cataloging policy within an institutional context.
Instructor: Deborah J. Leslie.

DEBORAH J. LESLIE is Head of Cataloging at the Folger Shakespeare Library,
before which she held positions as rare book cataloger at Yale University
and at the Library Company of Philadelphia. She is the chair of the RBMS
Bibliographic Standards Committee. Various instructors taught this Rare
Book School course 14 times between 1983 and 1997; DJL has taught it at
least once annually since 1998.

75. PUBLISHING EAD FINDING AIDS. (MONDAY-FRIDAY, AUGUST 4-8). This course
will introduce students to standards and software used for publishing
Extensible Markup Language (XML) encoded documents, with a focus on EAD
encoded finding aids. It is aimed at systems support personnel in archives,
libraries, and museums, or self-supporting archivists, librarians, and
museum staff who would like an introduction to EAD publishing technology
and methods. The course will focus on writing stylesheets using Extensible
Stylesheet Language-Transformation (XSLT), but will also cover Web server
technology, available software for indexing and searching XML encoded
information, and use of Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL) Formatting
Objects to produce printed finding aids. Topics include: in-depth
introduction to the Extensible Stylesheet Language (XSL); authoring of
stylesheets using the XSLT language, focusing on XML to XML, and XML to
HTML transformations; use of multiple stylesheets and frames; survery and
functional evaluation of available indexing and searching software; use of
XSL Transformation and Formatting Objects to produce PostScript, PDF, RTF,
and other printable encodings; survey and functional evaluation of XSL and
XSLT software. The course will conclude with a discussion of management and
administrative issues presented by Web publishing. Instructor: Daniel Pitti.

DANIEL PITTI became Project Director at the University of Virginia's
Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities in 1997, before which
he was Librarian for Advanced Technologies at the University of California,
Berkeley. He was the Coordinator of the Encoded Archival Description
initiative.