Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Let us specify, however, that the choice to interpret a certain category of physical
expanses such as
macro-places
is entirely based on the nature of the audiovisual
corpus with which, and on which, we are working. Thus, if the
universe of
discourse*
of an archive is inherently limited, e.g. to a country or a region, it goes
without saying that the list of relevant macro-places has to be adapted to the
universe of discourse in question. This adaptation is fairly easy to carry out, on
condition, of course, that we know the relevant macro-places:
− we first compile an ASW micro-thesaurus of the relevant macro-places (for the
universe of discourse of a particular archive);
− then in sequence 2 (Figure 3.3) we replace the ASW micro-thesaurus “Regions
of the Americas” with the “correct” micro-thesaurus.
If the universe of discourse of an archive has no need of these macro-places or if
the physical macro-places are not relevant for contextualizing the knowledge objects
thematized in an audiovisual corpus (as is the case, for instance, for a corpus relating
to classes in the history of mathematics), sequence 2 is then simply omitted.
Now as regards identification of the more circumscribed geographic site (see the
second phase
of the task of geographic location), it has been left to the analyst to
identify and describe this “freely”. That said, if the universe of discourse of an
archive is sufficiently circumscribed, and if we know,
a priori
, all the places which
may be useful to more specifically locate a knowledge object thematized in an
audiovisual text, then the procedure of free description can be replaced by one of
controlled description. In that case:
1. we must first
compile the thesaurus
of places of location, i.e. the thesaurus
which
a priori
defines the rank of the values of the conceptual term [TERRITORY]
(see Figure 4.3);
2. then,
remove
the activities of description making up the
procedure of free
description of a physical territory;
3. and, finally,
replace them
with a
procedure of controlled description
made up
of a
micro-thesaurus of more circumscribed places
from which the analyst chooses
the appropriate place during his work of describing an audiovisual text.
The advantage of using the procedure of controlled description is plain to see
here: the additional work beforehand (relating to the definition and constitution of
one or several micro-thesauruses) is handsomely compensated later on by a
reduction in the time of analysis (this becomes considerably longer if free
description is used).
