Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
The other main descriptive procedure which we have identified and developed is
that of
controlleddescription*
, which we shall present in Chapter 10.
In section 9.2 we shall give a general presentation of the procedure of so-called
free description. Then, in sections 9.3-9.7, we shall discuss some of the most
commonly-occurring activities that make up that procedure in greater detail.
9.2.Organizationoftheso-called“freedescription”procedure
The procedure of free description relates directly to the issue of fairly free
production of metadata by an amateur or professional analyst (either as an individual
user
or as a
community of users
) of textual (and, more specifically, audiovisual)
objects. This fairly free production of metadata by users or groups of users is
nevertheless “controlled” in that the actual process of production -
indexation
- is
carried out in reference to a model of description of the content and follows a
framework, an imposed scenario (for further details on the subject of the distinction
between a model of description and a scenario of activities, see [STO 11a]).
In other words, we believe that explicitizing the activities of the procedure of
free description is a crucial condition in order to render more sophisticated the
essential process which is the
analysis of an audiovisual text or corpus
in light of
digital social media [DES 11a; DES 11b; DES 11c] and also in order to better adapt
it to the expectations and interests of the individuals and groups who have to use it
in order to diffuse, share, conserve and transmit their audiovisual content.
The procedure of free description is in fact very similar to the procedure
traditionally known as
free indexation
. However, unlike free indexation in the usual
sense of the term, free description is understood here as a task which is entirely
guided by
models
of description representing a domain of expertise such as those of
the experimentation workshops of the ASW-HSS project.
Only the values
, i.e. the
indices
in the form, for example, of simple or compound nominal expressions, are
freely generated by the analyst (see section 9.3 below).
Figure 9.1 shows an extract from a form for describing the content of audiovisual
corpora whose subject relates to archaeology of Oriental Antiquity. This is the
eighth sequence of the analytical model devoted to identifying and describing the
relevant historical era in Oriental Antiquity. This eighth sequence, along with the
ninth sequence entitled
Dating and periodization by century
, constitutes the task of
referentialcontextualization
(here: chronological or historical contextualization) of a
knowledge object corresponding to the area of archaeological research devoted to
the Ancient Orient (the topic of archaeological research itself covers knowledge
