Phase 2: Development of New Methodologies for E-Texts

With printed text, the development of title pages, tables of content, page numbers, chapter headings, consistent punctuation, indexes, etc. was a gradual process spread over several centuries. In view of this it is to be expected that a young medium such as digital text still suffers from a lack of adequate methods to unleash its great potential. In this project, new methodologies will be developed and refined by a team of Daoist scholars. This will help in developing techniques and strategies to improve the quality and relevance of digital Chinese texts and their use in research. In this domain, Dr. Christian Wittern is developing a special editing environment for online collaborators and markup strategies adapted to the exigencies of Daozang jiyao texts. It includes options for creating new markup tags and ID codes tailored to the specific content of the chosen texts as well as to other data. A set of basic data will be prepared with the goal of forming a knowledgebase of information related specifically to premodern Daoism and to Daoism in general.

Phase 1: Input of Daozang jiyao Extra-canonical Texts

Phase 3: Publications in Digital and Printed Formats