Editorial Introduction to Issue 8 of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative

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of the importance of TEI encoding for formal textual representation. In particular, thanks to the research group led by the late Giuseppe Gigliozzi, research and teaching activities related to TEI have spread throughout Italy. 3 The theme of the conference-"The Linked TEI: Text Encoding in the Web"-focused on the role of text encoding and TEI in a networked cultural environment. This focus encouraged reections on the semantics of the TEI conceptual model, on the relationships among TEI and other data models and encoding schemas, on the role of TEI within a framework of interconnected digital resources as well as on the diverse ways users can access and take advantage of TEI-encoded resources. The title hints obviously at a very topical theme in the digital realm: the emergence and diusion of the Linked Data paradigm and of a Participatory Web. TEI has had a crucial-and widely recognised -role in encouraging and facilitating the creation of vast quantities of textual and linguistic resources. It has been one of the major enabling technologies in the Digital Humanities. However, the dominant paradigm in the creation of digital resources, especially in the academic domain, has been that of the individual archive, the single monolithic or boutique project, perfectum in itself. To continue in its role of stimulus for innovation in the Digital Humanities, TEI has to be able to embrace fully-albeit critically-the new paradigm. The sharing and the interconnection of data on the Web as well as the emergence of semantically-enriched data are interesting aspects of technological innovation which will bring about new developments. The vision around "Linked TEI" also encompasses issues of multilingualism and multiculturalism: to be connected means to recognise and collaborate with dierent traditions and languages.

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Contributions to the conference call for papers responded very well to the challenge with a rich range of topics and perspectives represented in the programme: from reections on semantic models and textuality, to data modelling and analysis, from re-thinking research infrastructures and developing participatory approaches, to establishing bi-directional linking between dictionaries and corpora. Among the many papers, posters, and panels accepted and presented at the conference, a large number were submitted for consideration and peer review for this issue of the Journal of the Text Encoding Initiative, resulting in the largest issue of the journal published to date.

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The set of articles published here follow three main threads of interests around the TEI:

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TEI in relation to other semantic and modeling formalisms;

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TEI as an expression of domain-specic text and data models; 3. TEI processing workows and tools. Humanities today, has the time and place for the TEI come and gone? A step back to think of where we are-and therefore where we are going-implies a reconsideration of the historical focus of the TEI: texts, and in particular the modeling of texts for representation and processing purposes. It is this historical focus together with a periodical shifting of its limits and limitations that ensures the continuing relevance of the TEI: the meanings of texts change; the term "text" itself is perceived and applied in a wide sense; what we want to do with texts changes. The heart of our research endeavours continues to be the slippery connes of our cultural productions, to be seen, analysed, reected upon, deconstructed, formalized, processed, remediated, and re-interpreted.

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The key to ensuring that the TEI will continue its valuable contributions to scholarship and culture more generally lies therefore also in a slight but crucial tilt to its rhetorics: the TEI is not only about delivering a standard but rather, and perhaps more signicantly, about the intellectual activity of creating and developing that standard in partnership with the diverse communities of researchers, archivists, librarians, and other professionals of the cultural heritage sector, software developers, infrastructures providers, artists, citizens. A linked TEI looks less and less like a jigsaw where all pieces are cut to t together, and more like an intertwining of hands.