Documentary Texts

Texts which are not textual units occur often in manuscripts as additions. That is why the list of types for these texts is in the Taxonomy under 'Additions'.

Please, make sure you encode these texts correctly according to their actual status in the manuscript.

If you want to provide an ID for a given text of this type, you can do so and create a Work record for it, where the same keywords used in <desc type>↗ are added as keywords to the record.

You need not by any means to always assign an ID to each of these texts, they already have one within the manuscript they belong to, which is unique and precise enough and you can reference anywhere.

You might find more appropriate to associate a document to a narrative unit, if the formalization is such, using a <title>↗ as discussed also in the page about additions. The following example is from Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana, BML Or. 70

  <list>
    <item xml:id="a1">
        <locus target="#201v #203 #204" facs="211"></locus>
        <desc type="GuestText"><title ref="NAR0015ListForSingleFeasts"></title></desc>
    </item>
    <item xml:id="a2">
        <locus target="#204r" facs="214"></locus>
        <desc><title ref="NAR0006monast"></title> Rules on the relationship of the monks to the monastery when they leave.</desc>
    </item>
  </list>

You do not have to always give a value to @type in <desc>↗, neither you have to give a <title>↗, this depends on what is known and you wish to encode.

There will be cases when it is only worth adding a value to @type in <desc>↗, cases in which an association to a Narrative Unit is all that can be done, and cases in which the two might be very similar.

While the value of @type in <desc>↗ is only providing a useful grouping keyword from the taxonomy, the identification with a Textual Unit or Narrative Unit specifies that the current text is an

In the same way in which a document in a quaternary stratum can be associated with a Narrative Unit, a quaternary stratum content which can be identified with a stable content can be referenced in this same way, like in London, British Library, BL Orient 481

  <item xml:id="a15">
    <locus target="#92r"></locus>
      <desc type="Letter">A <title ref="LIT2665SD">letter</title>...
      ...</desc>
  </item>

Here you will notice also how assigning a value to @type in <desc>↗ is different from identifying it with a Textual or Narrative Unit

If a document is the main content of a manuscript, it can be encoded in the same way as other main contents in <msContents>↗. If it is not an identifiable Textual Unit, it might also be assigned a Narrative Unit identifier in the same way.

For meaningful groups of documents you can also use the document corpus grouping

In case your text is in an <additions>↗ <item>↗ and it is composed of different sections, you can use <seg>↗ with @ana as specified in the above page.