The Human Art of Encoding: Markup as Documentary Practice

This paper describes the Markup Analysis Project, a research initiative of the Information Policy and Practice Research Group at the University of Sydney to investigate suitable frameworks for understanding the complex interactions currently evident in digital document development. Encoding digital documents shares much in common with information management’s traditions of classification and descriptive cataloguing, yet there is no evidence of a consistent framework or reference point for undertaking this work. Although markup languages are now widely deployed to identify and define the structural and contextual characteristics of electronic documents, to date, very little work has been undertaken to evaluate how the encoded elements of a markup language are being used by human authors and systems developers in practice. Our study begins to address this by reviewing the literature of the field in search for common threads that will support a framework for a practice oriented view. Moreover we conclude that a clear understanding of digital representation as documentary practice as been absent from mainstream considerations of markup and digital document development and make recommendations for its inclusion.