The description DTD, referred to here as the TEI-MS, was constructed in order to obtain a set of tags (with relevant documentation) suitable for encoding descriptions of western medieval and renaissance manuscripts. Focus was on manuscripts that contain texts as opposed to documents, i.e., manuscripts that are or that originated as codices, rather than the single document, but not to hierarchies inherent in organic, unitary archives of documents. TEI-MS’s flexibility ensures its use for ex novo cataloging, for legacy data (given the numbers of printed catalogues of medieval and renaissance manuscripts) and for the individual scholar (whose purpose in describing a group of manuscripts may vary considerably from that of a library).

The TEI Manuscript-Description Working Group, 1998-2003:

• Consuelo W. Dutschke, Columbia University, co-chair
• Ambrogio Piazzoni, Vatican Library, co-chair
• Peter J. Kidd, Oxford, Bodleian Library; later, The British Library
• Eva Nylander, Lund University Library
• Merrilee Proffitt, University of California; later, Research Libraries Group