Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
2) The stage of data collection leads to the creation or updating/enriching of a
pre-existing
field corpus*
. The field corpus is made up not only of data produced
within the boundaries of the field. Take the example of the recording of a
field
as
circumscribed as a research seminar whose sessions to be filmed are spread out over
a whole academic year. The corpus of data documenting the field
research seminar
is not (necessarily) restricted to the audiovisual recordings of the various sessions. It
covers all the data deemed pertinent either to give an account of that field (i.e. to
make it an archive of knowledge in the true sense of the term), to facilitate a high-
quality analysis of such-and-such an aspect of the filmed session, to have a
documentary base in view of one or more publications (online) of the seminar, or to
transform it (as it is, or after a process of selection of documents which must be
preserved “absolutely”) into a
heritage corpus
(see below) documenting, e.g. the
history of a discipline or of a research institution.
3
3) The stage of technical and auctorial processing relies on a selection of
collected data forming part of a field corpus, or else of several field corpora, or on
data stemming from different periods in the life of a field corpus (a field corpus can
be updated, enriched, etc.). In any case, a
processing corpus*
is composed of data
selected, e.g., with a view to being cut together to constitute a
new audiovisual
creation
corresponding to an authorial intention to publish (i.e. to a scenario
defining such a creation). Thus, an intention to publish the recordings of a research
seminar may be aimed at diffusing a certain problem dealt with during the said
seminar. In this case, not the “entire” seminar is the object of an intention to publish,
but rather just those parts of it in which the problem chosen is dealt with. Yet even
when a decision is taken to publish “the entirety” of the seminar, the recordings
made during the field phase have to undergo technical processing (encoding,
checking of the image and sound quality, deletion of unusable passages, etc.) before
being made available for publication of the seminar and its various sessions in the
form, e.g., of a website. Hence, no matter whether the processing stage is reduced to
a “simple” activity of processing or whether it also covers a genuine authorial
processing, its analysis and its publication, on the other. Thus, the person in charge of the
interview must identify the main subjects which will be developed, checking this with the
researcher beforehand, while respecting the scenario-type of an interview in the context of the
ARA program. For further information, see the documentation online on the website of the
ARA program: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/FR/about4.asp or the ASW-HSS
research log (
Carnet de recherche ASA-SHS
) on the French-language portal
hypotheses.org
(http://asashs.hypotheses.org/category/programme-aar).
3 In the context of the ARA Program, we did indeed put in place a whole series of simple
procedures for constituting such field corpora when recording what we call
scientific events
(interviews with a researcher, conferences or research seminars). Thus, a certain number of
seminars, conferences and interviews filmed between 2002 and 2008 are documented in the
form of a field corpus, only certain parts of which were published on the portal site of the
ARA Program: http://www.archivesaudiovisuelles.fr/FR/.
