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Proposing a TEI-encoding 
Project for the Wesley Works
Michelle M. Taylor, University of South Florida
Andrew Keck, Southern Methodist University

ABSTR AC T The Text Encoding Initiative (TEI), a branch of XML, is 
a mature standard for encoding texts that was developed three 
decades ago and continues to be improved and expanded upon 
today. Learn about how TEI was centrally imagined for a proj-
ect devoted to a corpus of John Wesley material. We will begin by 
explaining why we chose to use TEI for the project and reviewing 
the considerations inherent in transitioning from a longstanding 
print-based project to a digital project, including the challenges of 
converting thousands of pages of text across different file types 
into rudimentary TEI. Next, we will move into topics specific to TEI 
encoding practices, including the creation of XML tagsets designed 
to maximize the use value of the Wesley Works for its various audi-
ences: scholars, librarians, and clergy. Finally, we will show the TEI in 
action by sharing an example of an XML file from our first round of 
encoding.

OVERVIEW

Most theological libraries serving Wesleyan traditions have a 
subscription to what is often referred to as the Bicentennial Edition 
of the Works of John Wesley. The initial planning for the project 
began in 1960, during the bicentennial of Wesley’s life, with the proj-
ect now closing in upon the final printed volumes of the thirty total.

The project has long been a cooperative enterprise between Drew, 
Duke, Emory, and SMU, with Boston University, the World Method-
ist Council, and various UMC boards added over time. The board of 
directors has retained the intellectual property rights of this critical 
edition and was interested in a digital project that would support free, 
wider access to the edition as well as one that could be in conversa-



Listen and Learn Sessions  229

tion with other critical editions and advanced projects in the digital 
humanities. 

Finally, the first word of our session is “proposing.” Neither 
presenter works in an official capacity for the Wesley Works Edito-
rial Project, with the proposed project currently lacking status and 
funding. It is simply an exploration of what a project might look like.

WHY TEI?

TEI is a subset of eXtensible Markup Language (XML) that was devel-
oped specifically for the publication of documents related to human-
ities scholarship and for research based on those documents. It 
contains almost 600 “elements,” also known as tags, designed to 
mark up documents. For instance, one can represent textual vari-
ants between different versions (“witnesses,” to use bibliographi-
cal terms) of a text—a key factor when producing a digital edition 
like the Wesley Works—as well as use advanced tagging systems to 
link documents together and provide enhanced search functions. 
Like all XML, TEI is first and foremost descriptive: it is not code that 

“does” anything, but simply presents a text document broken down 
into its various components. The advantages of using TEI over plain 
text formats are myriad, then. The elements of TEI allow texts to be 
broken down into much more genre-specific components than any 
other system, and other elements allow encoders to provide addi-
tional information that makes the text more discoverable than a 
traditional “find in document” (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F) search would.

The TEI’s first Guidelines came out in 1987, so its standards 
are well-established. TEI is therefore a solid choice for creating a 
research project that can stand up to peer review. For digital editions 
like ours, this understates the case: TEI is less “a solid choice” than 
the choice. Indeed, it is the recommended format for digital editions 
and scholarly projects incorporated into 18thConnect, which “gath-
ers together information about and links to the best primary and 
secondary texts that are available in digital form, either freely avail-
able on the Web or available by subscription.” 18thConnect peer 
reviews scholarly projects like the Wesley Works aims to be, which 
are then searchable alongside other resources for eighteenth-century 
scholarship from libraries and companies like Gale.

Another advantage of TEI is that XML files may be transformed for 
countless digital representations and platforms. Our goal is to trans-



230  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

form our TEI document for web publication using XSLT stylesheets 
(XSLT is another part of the XML “stack” that we don’t really need to 
go into much here). However, we could also use stylesheets to create 
PDFs or other outputs.

THE TRANSITION FROM PRINT TO DIGITAL FORMAT

The print edition exists in 21 published volumes and contains 
sermons, hymns, instruction, meeting minutes, treatises, journals 
and diaries, letters, and other writings, and comprises approximately 
17,000 pages of text. Nine volumes remain to be published. What 
follows is an overview of and proposed methods for conversion of 
the edition’s pre-existing digital files to rudimentary TEI.

There are two major stages of the transition from print to digi-
tal format. The first can be automated; the second cannot. The first 
stage has a fairly simple goal: replicate in TEI the correctly edited text 
and basic document structure, such as paragraph breaks, as repre-
sented in currently-existing file formats. However, because the print 
volumes have been published over a span of sixty years, the file types 
are not uniform. This means that each batch of file types will have 
to be converted separately. There is more than one way to do this, 
but our preferred conversion process is to use Pandoc scripts via the 
command line to convert the files to XML files. Fortunately, we have 
primarily Word documents, which are easy to convert; however, 
earlier PDFs will have to be pre-converted to Word documents first, 
since Pandoc cannot currently handle PDF to XML conversion.

What gets “spit out” on the other end of the Pandoc conversion is 
immensely helpful in two ways. First, it prevents us from having to 
rely on potentially “dirty” OCR to produce a digital edition or, worse, 
type out 17,000 pages of text (and risk making mistakes!). Second, it 
preserves paragraph breaks. These are not small accomplishments 
by any means. However, what we have in this case is essentially no 
better than a Word document saved in XML format.

The second stage, then, is to turn this rudimentary TEI into data-
rich documents. This requires a human eye and a certain knowledge 
base to “tag” valuable information in the texts that different audi-
ences will want to be able to search for. This can only be automated 
in the sense that one can search for every instance of a word/term 
(again, a (Ctrl+F or Cmd+F search) and replicate the code every time 



Listen and Learn Sessions  231

using a “Find and Replace” feature in an XML editor. Otherwise, it is a 
manual process. In the next section, we will discuss what it looks like.

ENCODING PRACTICES FOR TURNING RUDIMENTARY TEI INTO 
DATA-RICH DOCUMENTS

A TEI document is made up of two basic components: a TEI header 
and the text itself. The TEI contains all of the metadata for the text 
and exists primarily to describe the digital file, not its source mate-
rial in print. However, the <sourceDesc> element (see figure 1) gives 
the encoder plenty of opportunity to describe the text’s original 
source if it is not “born digital,” like the Wesley Works is not born-
digital. Below is a screenshot of the most basic possible header for a 
Wesley Works document:

These headers will certainly become much more detailed as we build 
the project.

The body of each text will contain elements, or tags, that are 
unique to each document type (sermon, letter, journal, meeting 
minutes, etc.), as well as elements that are consistent among docu-
ment types. In the latter group we have three main categories, with 
descriptions of how they are used, in the screenshots below, given 
parenthetically:



232  AT L A 2020 PROCEEDINGS

1) Tags for people, places, and events, with tags for people 
containing references to VIAF (example: Horace)

2) Tags for Biblical allusions (example: Luke 16:1)
3) Thematic tags (example: tax collector)

As far as document-type-specific tags go, a decade of encoding expe-
rience suggests that we will likely not know what most of these are 
until we encode at least a couple examples of each document type.

Once the tagsets have been established, we will write an addi-
tional XML document called a schema to impose on each individual 
Wesley document. A schema limits the number of TEI elements an 
encoder can choose from, asking them to select choices from a list of 
options. This is one way the encoding process will be made easier for 
those who are new to, or less experienced with, TEI and/or Wesley 
materials.

WHO DOES THE ENCODING?

When answering this question, subject expertise comes in to play. 
No Wesley scholar has the technical experience necessary to pilot 
a digital edition, and so Michelle was recommended to Andrew as 
someone with an interest in Wesley/early Methodism and expertise 
in TEI. That the print edition, with all of its notes by Wesley schol-
ars, already exists can quell some of the concerns about the fact that 
Michelle’s background is in English and not religion or theology.

The question of whom to employ (whether literally, in terms of 
pay, or in terms of course or internship credit) as a team of encoders 



Listen and Learn Sessions  233

once proof of concept is established might seem more complicated at 
first glance, but it is actually not unusual either to train people new 
to TEI to encode subject matter in which they have a vested inter-
est or expertise, or to train people with expertise in TEI to encode 
subject matter in which they do not yet have expertise. As an exam-
ple, Michelle’s doctorate is in British literature of the long nineteenth 
century, and she was first trained in TEI in order to encode poetry; 
but she later worked on projects in American history, historical geog-
raphy, and Chinese architecture, among others.

The current plan, then, is to train teams of MDiv and PhD students 
at the five major Methodist seminaries (Boston University, Drew 
University, Duke University, Emory University, and Southern Meth-
odist University) every other year, as a master’s degree timeline 
would necessitate. Two aforementioned things make this plan tena-
ble and reduce the possibility of errors. Content-based errors will be 
greatly reduced by the fact that the print edition already contains 
notes by Wesley scholars, so encoders on all levels would be respon-
sible for correctly rendering those into digital format rather than 
producing that knowledge, as they might be for a “born-digital” proj-
ect. Technical errors will be greatly reduced by the fact that a schema 
will narrow an encoder’s options to the desired outcomes.

Still, mistakes are possible and will likely fall into two main cate-
gories: errors in identifications (of people, places, events, or addi-
tional biblical references/allusions that the editions did not explicitly 
call out), or missed identifications/incomplete tagging. These are 
problems common to most projects, however, and are not especially 
high-risk. The head editor can do a quick sweep of documents ready 
for publication, or a buddy system could be established between 
encoders to double-check each other’s work. As with all projects in 
their early stages, trial and error in the workflow will be necessary.

CONCLUSION

As our title makes clear, this has been our proposal for the Wesley 
Works. As we complete proof of concept in the hopes of becoming 
the official digital edition for Wesley’s edited works, we are fully 
prepared to make adjustments and are aware additional adjust-
ments will need to be made once a team of encoders is added to the 
project.


