As the first direct child of any <TEI> element, the <teiHeader> contains all of the file's meta-information: the document's name, information about the transcribers, general information about the Beckett Digital Manuscript Project, etc. Because it is a somewhat generic part of the XML file, it is usually the last thing we update. While you are encoding, you therefore generally don't need to bother filling all this information in. Instead, you can just copy/paste the <teiHeader> in the example below, and we'll adjust and update it afterwards.
Still, the <teiHeader> is in itself of course also an important (and obligatory!) part of TEI encoding, and so you might be interested in the tags we use there, and what their content could or should be. And in a few exceptional cases, more advanced encoders might want to fill in some information in the <teiHeader> to check if a specific feature is visualized correctly (see, for instance, the type="transposition" attribute of the <seg> tag). For those purposes, we have this section on the header to the Encoding Manual. Rather than give you a complete list of all the tags that are used in this part of the encoding, we have decided to divide this section of the manual up into the three modules we use: <fileDesc>, <encodingDesc>, and <profileDesc>. The first of these three, <fileDesc> has in turn been subdivided into three submodules: <titleStmt>, <publicationStmt>, and <sourceDesc>. You will find a link to each of these (sub)modules in the tree-like tag structure in the sidebar on the right; and an example of a complete <teiHeader> below.
[xml]
<teiHeader type="text">
<fileDesc>
<titleStmt>
<title xml:id="UNN">The Unnamable</title>
<author xml:id="SB"><name>Samuel Beckett</name></author>
<principal><name xml:id="SW">Shane Weller</name> & <name xml:id="DVH">Dirk Van Hulle</name></principal>
<principal><name xml:id="VN">Vincent Neyt</name></principal>
<principal><name xml:id="WD">Wout Dillen</name></principal>
<funder>
<name>Centre for Manuscript Genetics (UA)</name>
<address>
<addrLine>Universiteit Antwerpen (UA)</addrLine>
<addrLine>Prinsstraat 13</addrLine>
<addrLine>B-2000 Antwerpen</addrLine>
<addrLine>Belgium</addrLine>
<addrLine>tel: +32 (0)3 220 42 46</addrLine>
<addrLine>email: dirk.vanhulle@ua.ac.be</addrLine>
</address>
</funder>
<respStmt>
<name>Dirk Van Hulle</name>
<resp>SBDMP coordinator, encoding scheme, TEI customization</resp>
</respStmt>
<respStmt>
<name>Vincent Neyt</name>
<resp>Project architecture, encoding scheme, TEI customization</resp>
</respStmt>
</titleStmt>
<extent/>
<publicationStmt>
<authority>Centre for Manuscript Genetics (University of Antwerp)</authority>
<pubPlace>Antwerp</pubPlace>
<availability>
<p>Not to be distributed outside the project</p>
</availability>
</publicationStmt>
<sourceDesc>
<bibl>abbreviated in the Manuscript Chronology as EN1<lb/><lb/>
"Written in blue and red inks in three notebooks. Each notebook has, in Beckett's hand, the title, number of the notebook, and the note, 'original manuscript of the author's translation'. The second notebook has the additional phrase (title?) 'Beyond words?' The last manuscript page of the third notebook bears the inscription: 'This is the original MS of my translation of L'Innommable / For my friend Jake Schwartz, / with my best wishes. / Samuel Beckett / March 1958.'"<lb/><lb/>
Lake, Carlton, ed. (1984), <hi rend="i">No Symbols Where None Intended: A Catalogue of Books, Manuscripts and Other Material Relating to Samuel Beckett in the Collections of the Humanities Research Center</hi> (Austin: Humanities Research Center), p. 62, item 112</bibl>
</sourceDesc>
</fileDesc>
<encodingDesc>
<tagsDecl>
<rendition xml:id="blueblackink">#153E7E</rendition>
<rendition xml:id="redink">#B00000</rendition>
<rendition xml:id="pencil">#666666</rendition>
</tagsDecl>
<editorialDecl>
<p><list>
<item>Correction:</item>
<item>Normalization:</item>
<item>Quotation:</item>
<item>Hyphenation:</item>
<item>Interpretation:</item>
</list></p>
</editorialDecl>
</encodingDesc>
<profileDesc>
<handNotes>
<handNote scope="major" medium="blueblack_ink"/>
<handNote medium="red_ink"/>
<handNote medium="pencil"/>
</handNotes>
<langUsage>
<language ident="FR"/>
<language ident="EN"/>
</langUsage>
<listTranspose>
<transpose>
<ptr target="#transpo2"/>
<ptr target="#transpo1"/>
</transpose>
</listTranspose>
</profileDesc>
</teiHeader>[/xml]