Capturing relationships expressed in image descriptions : a preliminary investigation

Abstract

Objectives. Relationships have powerful, but poorly understood, effects on how information objects are represented, structured, and processed in computational environments. This paper describes a preliminary investigation and innovative approach to the relationship problem in the context of archival discourse. -- Methodology. It examines how ontological tools and content analysis techniques can be adapted and refined to help researchers identify, capture, and classify relationships expressed in image descriptions. Additional insight is offered by examining relationships in light of three describing contexts: image searcher, curator, and cataloger. The nature of the sample data is discussed, including how data is validated and reliability determined. -- Results. Limitations of previous relationship research are considered and a new methodology is introduced that is designed to assist researchers in effectively predicting relationships occurring in textual descriptions.

Keywords

• Graphic documents
• Photographic documents
• Subject cataloguing
• Ontologies
• Archival description
• Semantic relationships