KELLIA White Paper on Metadata Standards for Digital
CopticBy Ulrich Schmid, So Miyagawa, Caroline T. Schroeder

From the Koptische/Coptic Electronic Language and Literature International
Alliance (KELLIA) Project (​https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de​)
Product of a joint Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities(HG-229371) and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (BE 4172/1-1)
Project Directors: Caroline T. Schroeder, University of the Pacific(American PI), Amir Zeldes, Georgetown University (co-PI), Heike Behlmer,
Georg-August University, Göttingen; Göttingen Academy of Sciences andHumanities (German PI)
Institutional Grantees: University of the Pacific (NEH), Georgetown
University (NEH), Georg-August University (DFG)The KELLIA White Paper on Metadata Standards for Digital Coptic by ​Ulrich Schmid,
So Miyagawa, Caroline T. Schroeder​ is licensed under a ​Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License​.

27 March 2019

Metadata Standards for Digital Coptic
Members of the Advisory Boards for the Coptic Scriptorium project and the Digital
Edition of the Coptic Old Testament project as well as project participants havereviewed this document prior to publication. This White Paper is also attached to themain KELLIA project White Paper(h​ ttps://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/downloads/KELLIA-white-paper.pdf​) a​ s Appendix 4.

1. Introduction
Metadata records basic descriptive and administrative metadata like license statements
and call numbers from holding institutions, as well as much more detailed descriptions,e.g., of the materiality of information carriers or more abstract aspects of the encodedsource and its cultural implications are possible.
German partners completed a survey of Metadata Standards and formats used in thefield of Coptic studies and neighboring disciplines. The survey results are in a ​databasepublished as KELLIA E-ditions​.1 This appendix contains a summary of findings andrecommendations based on the survey and work in KELLIA. The survey was conductedprior​ to the establishment of the PAThs project in Rome.2 PAThs will be providing
unique identifiers to Coptic text-bearing objects; we encourage projects to follow PAThs
ongoing work.

2. Encoding
Most projects use TEI-P5 or a specialised subset of TEI as EpiDoc to ensureinteroperability in theory. TEI XML (and the EpiDoc subset) includes themsdescription-module with elements for describing manuscripts.3

1​http://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/editions/2​http://paths.uniroma1.it/

3​http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/MS.html

1Since every project has its own perspective, in reality many tags are interpreted indifferent ways due to the very general TEI-Definitions. Projects often develop their own
metadata categories and map a set of metadata on to TEI-P5. The Coptic Old
Testament project’s metadata model is ​available online as an example​.4

3. Authority files
Recommended is also the use of authority files or similar data to link identical entities toa general information resource. For Coptic Studies, currently the best solution is to linkto Trismegistos People5 for a historic person or authority data for proper names. (Note:the Trismegistos People database ​is not​ a complete or precise prosopography.)
Pelagios6 and Pleiades7 are the best authorities for linking ancient geographical entities.
To find names to specify a geographic location one may use GeoNames8 or Getty.
PAThs is developing identifiers for place names in Egypt; projects should contact
PAThs regarding their metadata and identifiers for provenance.
A general tendency is to link personal, geographic or other kinds of entities to Wikidata9
to use structured linked open data-sets (also known as “Wikification”). One benefit isthat one can generate data-sets that can be used by anyone.

4. Standards and Controlled Vocabularies
There are no cross-project controlled vocabularies for metadata, and existing controlled
vocabularies (Getty, Dublin Core, EAGLE) do not suffice for Coptic Studies. We
recommend that each project publish their own controlled vocabularies to ensure data
integrity and consistency within the project; new projects should survey existing projects
so they do not need to “reinvent the wheel.” For more on controlled vocabularies, see

4​https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/189qBxOylUyo0rgUSP20kdkE5SBaAAHg7tAerIL1D5Yg

5​www.trismegistos.org

6​http://commons.pelagios.org/

7​https://pleiades.stoa.org/

8​http://www.geonames.org/

9​www.wikidata.org

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KELLIA White Paper on Linked Data Standards and Practices​, also published asAppendix 5 of the main KELLIA project White Paper.10
The PAThs project in Rome will be publishing stable identifiers for every Coptic
manuscript and for place names in Egypt; it will also Clavis Coptica entries for each
known Coptic text work.11 ​KELLIA partners encourage all Coptic projects to include
these identifiers in their metadata.
The Coptic Old Testament project explored mapping VMR-Data to METS/MODS toprovide an internationally approved metadata exchange format. This task could not be
accomplished:
Mapping the complex VMR structure to the even more complex METS/MODS
was time consuming; we aborted the trial during the conception-phase afterrealising that we do not have the time to dig deep into METS/MODS to achieve aproper result.
● Due to the fragmentation of Coptic manuscripts, one “document” would be split inthe VMR into different items with different rightholders and holding institutions.
Mapping multiple items to a single METS/MODS representation was difficult,since METS/MODS is designed to present a single dataset for a single legal
Resource.
●5. Data-AccessTo make data accessible for future research the metadata should be saved andprovided in a machine-readable form and under special licence agreements that allow
re-usage.
Many Coptological projects are accessible via self published or institutionally hosted
websites.12 But it depends on the project holders themselves if and how they publish
their data on this platform. On some websites one can easily download the required
information because free access to the data is provided. Just to name a few examples,​https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/downloads/KELLIA-linked-data-white-paper.pdf​,
https://kellia.uni-goettingen.de/downloads/KELLIA-white-paper.pdf
1011​http://paths.uniroma1.it/12

This White Paper’s scope is digital editions projects in a narrower sense (see above). As a side note,the blog of Alin Suciu should nevertheless be mentioned, where resources regarding coptological (mainlyphilologically centered) publications are provided. (​http://alinsuciu.com​)3

this is the case for the following projects: Coptic Scriptorium13, Inscriptions of Israel /Palestine14, U.S. Epigraphy Project15, epidat - epigraphische Datenbank16, Monasterium17, Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg18, Inscriptiones Graecae19, digilibLT - Biblioteca
digitale di testi latini tardoantichi20, Bibliotheca Palatina digital21, Papyri.info22 andPapyrus und Ostraka Projekt23. Most of them provide the data via XML-files. TheDeutsches Textarchiv24 and Germania Sacra. Die Kirche des Alten Reiches und ihre
Institutionen25 even offer more data formats like TCF, Turtle or json-ld). Sometimes afree registration is required to download the information (Papsturkunden des frühen undhohen Mittelalters26) and on a few occasions one can only register by paying a fee(Corpus dei Manoscritti Copti Letterari (CMCL)27).
Several homepages provide a section in which a reference to similar or related projects
such as Epigraphische Datenbank Heidelberg28, U.S. Epigraphy Project29, Inscriptions

13​http://copticscriptorium.org/

14​http://cds.library.brown.edu/projects/Inscriptions/index.shtml

15​http://usepigraphy.brown.edu/projects/usep/collections/16​http://www.steinheim-institut.de/cgi-bin/epidat

17​http://monasterium.net/mom/home?_lang=deu

18​http://edh-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/home?lang=de

19​http://telota.bbaw.de/ig/

20​http://digiliblt.lett.unipmn.it/index.php

21​http://digi.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/de/bpd/index.html

22​http://papyri.info/23​https://papyri.uni-leipzig.de/content/start.xml?XSL.lastPage.SESSION=/content/start.xml

24​http://www.deutschestextarchiv.de/25​https://adw-goe.de/fr/forschung/forschungsprojekte-akademienprogramm/germania-sacra/

26​http://www.papsturkunden.de/EditMOM/home.do27​http://www.cmcl.it/

28​http://edh-www.adw.uni-heidelberg.de/links

29​http://usepigraphy.brown.edu/projects/usep/links/

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of Israel / Palestine30, Papyri.info31, and Germania Sacra: Die Kirche des Alten Reiches
und ihre Institutionen32 can be found. In doing so, it is easier for the user to get to know
and browse already existing and theme related undertakings. But this is a far cry froman extensive catalogue in which projects using digital methods are listed as it is justrudimentary linking from project-website to project-website. A central coptologicalplatform aggregating discipline-related digital editions or similar data does not exist at
the moment.
Some projects provide access to content data via defined APIs like OAI-PMH. (See Das
Altägyptische Totenbuch. Ein Digitales Textzeugenarchiv33 OAI-PMH interface.)

6. Recommendations
Data created by computer aided Coptological research should be provided asmachine-readable and thus digital data. In this manner encoded data including
metadata should be archived by institutionally or disciplinary bound repositories whichallow long-term digital preservation. This comprises not just storage space or its support
but also persistent identification of digital resources via persistent identifiers (PIDs) like
DOI34 or other kinds of Uniform Resource Identifiers (URI).35 As an institutional
Repository, for example, TextGrid-Repository36 can be mentioned which created aconsistent long-term preservation policy and infrastructure: Each digital resource [there]
is identified by a PID and accessible via an URL.37 Furthermore the Repository and its
data is fulltext searchable and thus provides direct access to all digital data produced.
Whereas recommending a specific Repository is not in the scope of this whitepaper’s

30​http://cds.library.brown.edu/projects/Inscriptions/related.shtml

31​http://papyri.info/docs/resources32​https://adw-goe.de/fr/forschung/forschungsprojekte-akademienprogramm/germania-sacra/links/

33​http://totenbuch.awk.nrw.de/34​https://www.doi.org/

35

Persistent identifiers are not just to identify resources but also to cite content from digital resources.

36​https://textgridrep.org/

37

See for example the resource textgrid:123rw that may be accessed via
https://textgridrep.org/browse/-/browse/123rw_0

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responsibility, repositories that are qualified by a ​DINI-Certificate38 or a similar
certification mark may be more desirable.
Machine-readable data created during the process of digital editing should be explicitlybound to a license which allows free access by means of scientific reuse. Therefore, theCreative Commons Licenses CC-BY39 and CC-BY-SA40 are recommended.
Data access does not just concern physical access to analog or digital resources but
also legal aspects with regard to creation and usage of resources. In that manner in themetadata, legal technicalities should be clarified for both the source and the digital
encoded data regarding authorship, data privacy and personality rights if applicable.
For linking and access, well-resourced projects should consider providing access tometadata via APIs (REST, OAI-PMH). Smaller projects can provide metadata
downloadable as csv files for further manipulation and research.
One desiderata is a central Coptological platform that catalogues projects withdescriptive and administrative metadata that can be searched (possibly drawn fromlinked data API’s from the projects). Desirable attributes include the following features:● in English and including projects world wide
● Searchable metadata and documentation:○ the link to the according project website (maintained to avoid dead links)○ a brief outline of the project○ the responsible persons and institutions○ metadata with regard to geographically, chronologically, thematically,institutionally, data-access (free, registration, fee-based), status (ongoing,completed, discontinued) information● a defined scope, eg. “digital editions”, “linguistically encoded corpora” etc.

38

​http://www.dini.de/dini-zertifikat/

39​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/40​https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

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● interactive: the user can contribute to the list of digital projects or correct an entry● list can be downloaded in various forms● license for use of data is stated● connection with other networks / platforms

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