Implementing TEI Authority File Lookups in LEAF-Writer: Researcher-centric software development in precarious funding contexts

Implementing TEI Authority File Lookups in LEAF-Writer: Researcher-centric software development in precarious funding contexts James Cummings, Luciano Frizzera, Diane Jakacki, Susan Brown, Mihaela Ilovan, Kelsey Rubin-Detlev James Cummings, Newcastle University, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6686-3728 Diane Jakacki, Bucknell University, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7836-1223 Susan Brown, University of Guelph, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0267-7344 Mihaela Ilovan, University of Alberta, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0649-4465 Luciano Frizzera, University of Waterloo, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7244-4178 Kelsey Rubin-Detlev, University of Southern California, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0654-0273 Short Abstract This short paper introduces recently-developed functionality added to LEAF-Writer, a free open source web-based semantic XML+RDF editor, to enable projects-specific lookups using their own corpora of named entities. The paper will also note the sustainability challenges to researcher-led software development in periods of shifting geo-political funding priorities. Abstract Background and Context LEAF-Writer is a widely-adopted, free, web-based, semantic editor for Text Encoding Initiative (TEI) and Linked Open Data (LOD) annotation. This short paper reports on recent developments made to LEAF-Writer while commenting on the sustainability of research software development during shifting geo-political research funding priorities. While LEAF-Writer is available in a standalone version that anyone can use (LEAF-Writer Commons), it is also a crucial component of the larger LEAF-VRE environment. The larger LEAF-VRE infrastructure is used by important DH projects such as The Collaboratory for Writing and Research on Culture (CWRC/CSEC) and Bucknell University’s LEAF@Bucknell for new and developing projects. LEAF-VRE is itself part of the larger Linked Infrastructure for Networked Cultural Scholarship (LINCS) project, which seeks to make humanities data more discoverable, searchable, and shareable. (Brown et al., 2021) All of the LEAF Commons tools use the TEI Guidelines which enable recording of a wide range of intellectual concerns and are the de facto standard for descriptive textual markup in the digital humanities community. The Endings Project Principles for Digital Longevity espouses the aim of producing sustainable data outputs, and recommends open standards like TEI XML. The LEAF Commons tools bear this in mind, recognizing that “Code is contingent: [...] code is not expected to have significant longevity”. (Endings Project Team, 2023, 3.3) Indeed, in a Digital Humanities Quarterly, article Holmes and Takeda further elaborate on this stating that: “there is no guarantee that code will work in a year, let alone fifty. This is a luxury afforded by static sites: while server-side infrastructures require a great deal of consideration and investment to ensure that the processing can be maintained in future, it makes no difference how a static site is created as they are, by definition, untethered from the processing that created them.” (Holmes and Takeda, 2023) LEAF Commons tools focus on providing rich data outputs for the static websites that the Endings Projects Principles seek to promote, and leverage these for greater analysis, for example with the Dynamic Table of Contexts. (Brown et al., 2015; Nelson et al., 2012; Ruecker, 2009) However, there are challenges in undertaking sustainable software development, even in long-running digital research labs. (c.f Ciula and Smithies, 2023) Moreover, properly-maintained researcher-led software development currently faces challenges from just-in-time software in the age of genAI. An important sustainability consideration which many people at DH2026 also face, is the ongoing challenge of maintaining and updating the software in an environment of precarious higher education research funding. (Dobson, 2012) It is certainly true that the “issue of sustainability should, therefore, cause us to pause and think carefully about how and why we produce and publish digital research in future”. (Tucker, 2022, p.116) In discussing new developments of LEAF-Writer, and the precarious circumstances in which they have been made, this short paper hopes to contribute to the discussion of software development and sustainability. About LEAF-Writer LEAF-Writer Commons runs entirely in the user’s browser and files are saved to their GitHub repositories (or downloaded locally), with no data stored on LEAF servers. This open-source, open-access Extensible Markup Language (XML) editor runs in a web browser, offering scholars and their students a rich textual editing experience without the need to download, install, and configure proprietary software, pay ongoing subscription fees, or learn complex coding languages. (Jakacki, 2022) This user-friendly editing environment incorporates TEI and Resource Description Framework (RDF) standards, meaning that texts edited in LEAF-Writer are interoperable both with other texts produced by the scholarly editing community and with other materials produced for the Semantic Web. LEAF-Writer is particularly valuable for pedagogical purposes, allowing instructors to teach students best practices for encoding texts without also having to teach students how to code. (Cummings, 2019) LEAF-Writer provides an easy text-first editing interface that encourages the encoder to focus on adding semantic markup, scholarly notes, and identifying named entities. Users can choose to edit in the tags-off view, show tags, or edit the underlying TEI XML. LEAF-Writer includes schema-constrained context-sensitive tagging and validation using out-of-the-box popular TEI customizations, or use their own custom TEI project schemas (with their own CSS). LEAF-Writer can import and export in a variety of formats. (Cummings and Jakacki, 2024) One of LEAF-Writer’s most important features is its built-in support for named entity linking. This enables tagging names of people, places, organisations, or works and associating these (with both TEI markup and LOD) to recognised authorities (such as VIAF, Wikidata, DBPedia, Getty, Geonames, GND and LINCS). LEAF-Writer can also generate LOD Annotations from named entities already tagged in XML. New Developments Recently, the LEAF team, in collaboration with the CatCor (Correspondence of Catherine the Great) project has introduced functionality for adding web-accessible project-specific TEI Authority files for particular entity types. (e.g. a ‘personography’ TEI file containing a <listPerson> for person entities, or ‘placeography’ <listPlace> for place entities, etc.). This is an important new feature for many TEI projects that want to do lookups using their own project-specific TEI authority files. However, these developments in conjunction with the CatCor project were vulnerable to shifting geopolitical funding priorities, since just as the new developments were finishing the NEH withdrew funding from the project at the direction of the US federal government. This short-paper presentation will describe some of the challenges faced while introducing the new functionality. Conclusion The LEAF team continues to develop and train LEAF-Writer in response to the needs of TEI communities This paper addresses the conference theme of ‘Engagement’ with a focus on the sub-theme “Annotating | Beyond Patterns: Interpretation with Small Data”, concentrating on the creation of high quality, small-scale, datasets for supporting more nuanced interpretation of corpora of TEI-encoded documents. This short paper reports on these developments in LEAF-Writer, reflecting on the sustainability of software development driven by researcher needs, which promise to be of great interest to researchers using the TEI and those interested in software sustainability. Bibliography Brown, Susan, Linda Cameron, Mihaela Ilovan, Olga Ivanova, Ruth Knechtel, Brent Nelson, Stan Ruecker, and Stéfan Sinclair. 2015. “Regenerations: Online Open Access Edition Using the Dynamic Table of Contexts.” CSDH/SCHN Conference. Ottawa. Brown, Susan, Erin Canning, Kimberly Martin, Sarah Roger, and Zach Schoenberger, 2021. “Linking Communities of Practice”, CSDH-SCHN 2021: Making the Network. Brown, Susan and Diane Jakacki. 2024. “The Linked Editing Academic Framework (LEAF) in the multimodal annotation ecosystem.” Reimagining Annotation for Multimodal Cultural Heritage. Rennes, France. Ciula, Arianna and James Smithies. 2023. “Sustainability and Modelling at King’s Digital Lab: Between Tradition and Innovation” in On Making in the Digital Humanities: The scholarship of digital humanities development in honour of John Bradley, ed by Julianne Nyhan, Geoffrey Rockwell, Stéfan Sinclair, and Alexandra Ortolja-Baird. pp. 78-104 Cummings, James. 2019. “Opening the Book: Data Models and Distractions in Digital Scholarly Editing.” International Journal of Digital Humanities. 1, 179-193. 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