The Text Encoding Initiative Guidelines have proven to be key tools for encoding transcriptions of the Archimedes Palimpsest, which include the earliest known mathematical texts of Archimedes. Since 1999, a multidisciplinary team has been disbinding, conserving, imaging, analyzing, transcribing and studying the 174 parchment folios with 13th-century prayer book text that was copied over Archimedes and other significant medieval manuscripts from the 10th century. On October 29, 2008, the approximately 2 Terabytes of Archimedes Palimpsest integrated image and transcription data are being released to the public. This final data release will be available for the 2008 TEI Conference, with earlier releases of TEI encoded transcriptions currently available at http://www.archimedespalimpsest.net/.

This paper will address the development of key elements of the Archimedes Palimpsest data set during the 10-year program, the development and application of best practices in standardized metadata to images and XML transcriptions, and challenges encountered in choosing and applying the TEI Guidelines. This will include discussion of the following:

The Archimedes Palimpsest Program has focused on the production of digital processed images of the underlying Archimedes text. With the requirement to also host digital transcriptions of the Archimedes text as a guide to the information in the images, the program team developed a transcription encoding plan. TEI is an essential element in the integration of the transcribed information, with the hyperspectral digital images supported by other metadata standards, including the Dublin Core Standard for identification metadata. This posed a significant challenge in addressing the needs of two generations of scholars and philologists: 1) Classically trained scholars who consider the annotations of the Leiden conventions and critical apparatus for the ancient Greek text to be essential end products, and 2) Technically trained scholars who consider XML encoded transcription as a product with the flexibility to then render the text in any of a range of conventions to meet scholarly and epigraphic needs. Following discussions at the 2007 TEI Conference, the TEI Guidelines were adopted as the transcription standard for the Archimedes Palimpsest Program.

The use of TEI will allow the hosting and integration of this data set and other cultural works across a range of services providers, libraries and cultural institutions. Inclusion of the TEI Guidelines as part of the data set will help ensure the data from this over 1,000-year-old manuscript will be readily searchable, available and accessible for decades to come. Additional information on this program is available at the Archimedes Palimpsest website.