Document Analysis Worksheet
author: Julia Flanders; Syd Bauman
language: en-US

Project and Document Analysis

Consider the sample document(s) you’ve chosen to focus on, and imagine a hypothetical audience for your digital version of it. Then briefly answer the following questions.

About the project

- Who is the primary audience? Do they have special needs that can be supported through the encoding of the document?
- What functions do you want to provide for your audience: what kinds of searching? What kinds of navigation?
- What are the significant informational features of the documents that will need to be represented to support these functions?

About the document(s)

- What genres do your documents contain?
- What are the significant chunks or subdivisions of your documents?
- List as many as possible of your documents’ significant features that you would want to encode, and provide a justification for encoding these features. Think about audience, likely uses of the information, and the balance of cost and benefit.
- What are the significant presentational features of your document (formatting, layout)? How much of this information do you consider important to capture? What is its effect on a reader's understanding of the text?

About the encoding

- What kinds of regularization of your document—if any—would be useful and appropriate? Would you regularize silently or preserve the original reading? Think about audience and probable use (including long-term use) of the data.
- What kinds of controlled vocabularies and terminology will be useful to constrain your encoding and help you maintain consistency? (For instance, values for the @type attribute on <div>.)
- What kinds of contextual information are needed to make the documents intelligible to your audience? (For instance, glossaries, or biographical information about the authors.)