astronomy

Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval

Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval is a astronomy topic covered in the lgStudy science library. This page brings together a partial reference excerpt, illustrations, worked examples, real-world applications and a short study plan, so you can understand Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval rather than just read about it. In short: The Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval (RVM) is a controlled vocabulary made up of four mostly bilingual thesauruses. It is designed for document indexers, organizations that want to describe the content of their documents or of their products and services, as well as anyone who wants to clarify vocabulary in English and French as part of their work or research.

Key takeaways

Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval belongs to astronomy; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

The Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval (RVM) is a controlled vocabulary made up of four mostly bilingual thesauruses. It is designed for document indexers, organizations that want to describe the content of their documents or of their products and services, as well as anyone who wants to clarify vocabulary in English and French as part of their work or research. RVM was created and is updated by the Répertoire de vedettes-matière section of the Université Laval Library in Québec City, and it contains over 300,000 authority records. It is used by over 200 public and private libraries and documentation centres in Québec, across Canada and some other countries, mostly in Europe.

History The Répertoire de vedettes-matière was created in 1946, when Université Laval librarians took the initiative to reuse the catalogue records from the Library of Congress's National Union Catalog to describe the documents in their collection. Before the copy cataloguing movement, the practice of reusing these records provided considerable savings despite the time needed to translate them. A list of subject headings was gradually compiled in French to provide descriptions of and access to local documentary resources. After the first official edition of the Répertoire was published in 1962, RVM attracted the attention of major documentary institutions in Québec and across Canada that recognized it as an essential tool for systemizing and standardizing methods for representing the content of their collections. The National Library of Canada adopted RVM in the French version of Canadiana, the National Bibliography of Canada, and gave it national standard status in 1974. A formal collaboration agreement between the two institutions was signed, and the first team of librarians dedicated solely to the intellectual management of RVM was established at Université Laval. It was also in 1974 that the Bibliothèque publique d'information in Paris started using RVM, which was emerging on the scene both in French-speaking countries and around the world. In 1980 the Université Laval Library signed a collaboration agreement with France's National Library, Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), allowing it to use RVM as the basic corpus for creating its subject headings authority index, known as Répertoire d'autorité matière encyclopédique et alphabétique unifié (RAMEAU), the only French-language equivalent of RVM still in use today. RVM's content and structure reflect its close relationship to the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), but RVM has nonetheless maintained its independence. In addition to developing original headings, RVM has expanded by adding subject headings whose English equivalents come from other source files more specialized than the LCSH. This expansion began in 1978 with the Canadian Subject Headings, followed in 1994 by the Medical Subject Headings from the United States National Library of Medicine and the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) from the J. Paul Getty Trust. The 9th and final paper edition of RVM was published in 1983 and so was the first user manual. In 2008 Université Laval and ASTED (Association pour l'avancement des sciences et des techniques de la documentation) jointly published a practical guide on the Répertoire de vedettes-matière. In 2010 the first RVM website was launched. In 2017 it launched its new Web platform, which provides access to more powerful search and display features, new indexing support tools, and translations and adaptations of three new thesauruses developed by the Library of Congress: the Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT), the Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT), and the Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms (LCDGT).

The thesauruses

RVM (Topics) RVM (Topics) is an encyclopedic thesaurus whose terms are classified according to a specific syntax. It is a translation and adaptation of the following thesauruses :

Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) Canadian Subject Headings (CSH) of Library and Archives Canada Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) of the National Library of Medicine Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) of the J. Paul Getty Trust It also contains original authorities exclusive to RVM, as well as equivalence with RAMEAU of Bibliothèque nationale de France. RVM (Topics) includes:

Subject headings (topical and geographic names, buildings, events, and certain other categories of proper names : gods, dukes, last names, programming languages, fictional and legendary characters, sects, etc.). A subject heading is an indexing term (consisting of a heading by itself or a heading followed by one or more subdivisions) used to accurately represent the topic of a document. Subdivisions (topical, form, chronological, and geographic). A subdivision is a component of a subject heading that supplements the main heading to clarify the concept or topic it represents. Here are a few examples of subject headings used in the Université Laval Library catalogue. These headings appear as is in the topic field in the bibliographic records :

Réseaux sociaux--Histoire--21e siècle (Social networks—History—21st century) Agriculture--Aspect économique--Modèles mathématiques (Agriculture—Economic aspects—Mathematical models) Canada--Accords commerciaux--Mexique--Congrès (Canada—Commercial treaties—Mexico—Congresses) Écriture--Philosophie--Ouvrages avant 1800 (Writing—Philosophy—Early works to 1800) Personnes âgées--Services communautaires de santé (Community health services for older people) Génie nucléaire--Sécurité--Mesures (Nuclear engineering—Safety measures)

RVMGF RVMGF is a translation and adaptation of Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT). It includes genre/form terms that make it possible to identify resources by their genre or form, thereby providing more options for indexing and identifying various kinds of documents. Some examples :

Romans historiques (Historical fiction) Films d'horreur (Horror films) Bandes dessinées de science-fiction (Science fiction comics) Jeux de plateaux (Board games) Cartes topographiques (Topographic maps) Données géospatiales (Geospatial data) Catalogues d'exposition (Exhibition catalogs) Rapports annuels (Annual reports)

… excerpt ends here. Continue reading the full article.

Illustrations

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In astronomy, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval

In research: Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval appears in astronomy research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Libraries in Canada, Library cataloging and classification, Thesauri (information retrieval), so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

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How to study Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
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Frequently asked questions

What is Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval in simple terms?

Why does Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval matter?

Because it connects several astronomy ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval.