TEI (Text Encoding Initiative) is a metadata schema that is most commonly used for literary texts or manuscripts. TEI is useful because it allows you to "tag" language elements, persons, places, or things. TEI is metadata that catalogs the text of the item and not just the item as a whole. TEI can be used for a variety of projects, including literary analysis of literatur or historical manuscripts (http://webapp1.dlib.indiana.edu/newton/).
At BGSU we are currently using TEI for multiple manuscript collections. An example of a TEI project at BGSU can be found here
Personal names: <persname> ,<surname>, <forename>, <genname>
Author: <author>
Places: <country>, <city>, <geog>, <geoname>, <placename>
Dates: <month>, <date>, <minute>, <daterange>, <day>
Organizations: <affiliation>, <orgtitle>, <orgtype>
Misspellings: <reg type=”mispellings”>
Abbreviations: <abbr>
Additions: <add>
Address: <address>
Salutation: <salute>
Signature: <signed>
Unknown words/unreadable: <unclear>
Corrections: <corr>
Form: <form>
Gap <omitted material): <gap>