What is TAPAS? Who is TAPAS?

TAPAS is a project hosted by Northeastern University and a collaborative effort involving many institutions and people who support TAPAS in different ways., TAPAS was created through generous funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (https://www.imls.gov/) , the National Endowment for the Humanities (http://neh.gov), and the TEI Consortium (http://tei-c.org).

How is TAPAS related to the TEI?

TAPAS is an initiative arising from the TEI community, and TAPAS membership is a benefit of TEI membership. TAPAS aims to support the use of the TEI Guidelines and the creation of high-quality TEI data. TAPAS is working closely with the TEI Consortium to develop a shared vision for TAPAS that will benefit TEI members and encourage broader support for the TEI.

TAPAS Projects and Accounts

What is the difference between a project and a collection?

A TAPAS "project" is essentially an organization or a group of people working together. A project might be something like a digital humanities center, or an institution, or a digital humanities project, or a group of scholars who are collaborating on a digital publication. A TAPAS "collection" is a set of texts that belong together and that are intended to function as a single TAPAS publication. A project may have one or more collections. For instance, the ABC College Library might set up a TAPAS project, and that project might include several TAPAS collections representing different sets of materials (the letters of John Jones; the travel diaries of Mary Smith, the financial papers of Ellen Brown). Each collection can be published in TAPAS as a distinct publication, with its own reading and search interface and its own URL.

Can I have more than one TAPAS account?

Yes, you can create more than one TAPAS account. Each account needs to use a distinct email address, since the email is used as the identifier for the account.

How do I close my account?

To close your account, click on "My account" and follow the instructions for deleting an account. Please note that if you are the sole administrator for a TAPAS project, that project will be deleted when you delete the account.

TAPAS Content

Can I use a custom TEI schema?

In a sense, all TEI schemas are custom schemas. TAPAS will typically accept most TEI data that validates against the TEI-All schema: that is, data that does not add any new elements or make radical changes to the overall TEI document structure. Some less commonly used elements may not display in an appropriate way, since we are focusing first on handling the most common TEI elements. Over time, TAPAS will handle a wider range of TEI data. If you are using a custom schema in which you have created new elements, or made very significant changes to the TEI document structure, your changed elements may not display in the way you expect. The TAPAS schema is designed to detect encoding that will tend to behave abnormally within the TAPAS interface, and you will receive warnings about these features. Future versions of TAPAS may permit you to use both custom schemas and custom stylesheets to permit the use of highly customized data.

Does it matter whether my files are valid?

The most significant role of validity within TAPAS is to detect whether your files contain features that will behave oddly within the publication interface, and to detect whether your files contain features that may enable them to take advantage of certain more advanced features (such as timelines) when those are available. Even data that is not valid against the TAPAS schemas may function quite well within the TAPAS interface. Over time, validity may come to serve other functions.

Can I use my own stylesheets?

At present, TAPAS does not provide for user-developed stylesheets (either CSS or XSLT. For security reasons, enabling user-contributed XSLT is very challenging, so this is a very long-range possibility. We are looking carefully at systems like TEI Processing that could enable users to embed styling and processing information in their ODD files, but this is still very much in the investigation stage. We are also considering ways of supporting user-contributed CSS, and this is an important feature for us to develop in the future. Please stay tuned!

Can TAPAS handle images? Page images?

Yes, TAPAS supports both page images and embedded images (for things like figures). TAPAS is not intended as a way to store high-quality archival images; images in TAPAS are intended as supporting materials for TEI documents. As a result we do not currently accept TIFF images.

Can TAPAS handle audio, video, GIS,....

At present TAPAS does not plan to support file formats other than TEI and image files. Other materials may be hosted elsewhere and linked from your TEI data.

What are TAPAS’s rules concerning copyright for TAPAS content?

The overall goal of TAPAS is to make TEI data more widely accessible. Copyright for TEI data and other project content remains with the project owners. However, when you publish your data with TAPAS, you are given the choice of several open-access licenses that give permission for reuse. You also have the option of keeping your project and collections private. This option is particularly appropriate in cases where your project is under development and you want to keep it private until it is ready for public view. TAPAS is not primarily intended for the creation of access-restricted publications.

What rights/permissions do I need to get for my TAPAS content?

When you publish your data with TAPAS, you affirm that you have permission to make that data public as part of your project, and you supply appropriate information to provide credit to any third parties.

Who can see my TEI documents? Can I control the privacy/visibility of my TEI documents?

Yes, if you choose to make the content of a collection publicly visible, your TEI content will be visible to anyone who visits the TAPAS site, which will be open to the general public. If you choose to keep the content of a collection private, your TEI content will be visible only to members of your project. You can control the visibility of your TEI content when you set up your TAPAS collections.

How much data can I upload to TAPAS?

TAPAS members may upload unlimited quantities of TEI data to TAPAS. Our hosting agreement with Northeastern University includes a small annual charge for image storage. TAPAS sets an overall limit on the total amount of image data that users can upload to TAPAS at 600 Mb. Additional storage is available for a fee on a cost-recovery basis; please contact us for details.

How long will my data be stored?

TAPAS's hosting agreement with Northeastern University provides for an initial 20-year period of curation for TEI data, which is renewable by mutual agreement.

How will my data be curated?

One key goal of the TAPAS service is to provide data curation services. The specifics of these services still need to be determined, but at a basic level they will probably include automated migration of TEI data to future versions of the TEI, and basic format migration of any image files. We will also offer the option of more detailed hand curation for data that cannot be automatically migrated, probably for an additional fee.

What happens when P6 (P7, P8...) comes out?

At present we envision that migration of TAPAS data to future versions of TEI will be undertaken using automated and semi-automated tools, by TAPAS staff. We will probably also try to provide tools to assist users in doing more detailed migration of their own data, if they are still in a position to do so.

How can I learn about other TAPAS users’ encoding?

For all TEI files contributed to TAPAS, the source XML is available to the reader, so one way to learn about other users' encoding is just to look at it directly. Over time, TAPAS will also be offering some tools you can use to get summary information on other projects' encoding, such as what elements they use and how they use them.

FAQ Forum

No answer to your question(s)? Head over to the Using TAPAS and TEI Forum to ask our support team.