Université Laval Bibliothèque
Répertoire de vedettes-matière
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FAQ

  • What is the Répertoire de vedettes-matière (RVM)?

    • a service
      • offering 5 thesauruses in continuous development - RVM (Topics), RVMGF, RVMMEM, RVMGD and RVMFAST - on all subjects and for all document types
      • designed for indexers in document research environments and for all organizations seeking to classify the content of documents or products and services
    • a suite of products and services designed to help indexers use thesauruses

  • Which thesauruses have been developed by RVM?

    • RVM (Topics): encyclopedic documentary thesaurus containing subject headings and subdivisions
    • RVMGF: thesaurus containing genre/form terms
    • RVMMEM: thesaurus containing medium of performance terms for music
    • RVMGD: thesaurus containing demographic group terms
    • RVMFAST: translation of FAST vocabulary developed by OCLC Research and the Library of Congress

  • What are the main changes on the new RVM website?

    • addition of 3 new thesauruses: RVMGF, RVMMEM and RVMGD
    • improved features associated with the
      • search engine
      • results display
      • navigation preference settings
    • addition of indexing support documents 

  • What is an "authority" in the RVM thesauruses?

    An autority is the established form of a subject heading, a subdivision, a genre/form term, a medium of performance term for music or a demographic group term.

  • What types of authorities are found in RVM thesauruses?

    • subject headings
      • topical
      • geographic
      • buildings
      • events
      • certain categories of proper names: gods, dukes, last names, programming languages, fictional and legendary characters, sects, and more
    • subdivisions
      • topical
      • form
      • chronological
      • geographic
    • genre/form terms
    • medium of performance terms for music
    • demographic group terms

  • What is the connection between the authorities in RVM thesauruses and Library of Congress thesauruses?

    RVM authorities are mostly a translation and adaptation of the Library of Congress authorities.

  • Where can I find a list of the new and modified authorities in RVMWeb?

    There is a list of the new and modified authorities under the New thesaurus releases section.

  • How do I search for authorities in RVMWeb?

    There are 3 ways to search for authorities in RVM

    • Basic search: default search method using keywords
    • Browse search: search in alphabetical indexes
    • Advanced search: more sophisticated search method: boolean and proximity operators, specific indexes, combined search boxes

  • Is the content of RVM thesauruses bilingual?

    The vast majority of the RVM content is bilingual (French and English) as RVM is a translation and adaptation of various English-language thesauruses

    • Library of Congress Subject Headings ( LCSH)
    • Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms ( LCGFT)
    • Guidelines on subject access to individual works of fiction, drama, etc. ( GSAFD) of American Library Association
    • Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music ( LCMPT)
    • Library of Congress Demographic Group Terms ( LCDGT)
    • Canadian Subject Headings ( CSH) of Library and Archives Canada
    • Medical Subject Headings ( MeSH) of National Library of Medicine
    • Art and Architecture Thesaurus ( AAT) of J. Paul Getty Trust
    • Homosaurus ( HOMOIT)

     

    In addition, since 2013 the RVM has been adding English equivalents to the original authorities when no equivalents are available in these thesauruses.

  • Do RVM thesauruses contain French equivalents?

    Yes, RVM thesauruses contain equivalent authorities from RAMEAU (Répertoire d'autorité-matière encyclopédique et alphabétique unifié), developed by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.

  • Is the RVMWeb website bilingual?

    The majority of RVMWeb is bilingual, allowing both French and English speakers to consult and use all the products and services on the site.

  • Where can I see the sources used to create the RVM authorities?

    Simply click on the section MARC display of an authority record. The sources can be found in the 670 MARC field.

  • Why are there sometimes numerous RVM (Topics) authorities equivalent to one LCSH authority?

    Due to the specifics of the French language or to meet more precise indexing needs, some LCSH authorities correspond to more than one equivalent in RVM. For example, LCSH subject heading Waterfalls is linked to 3 equivalents in RVM (Topics): Chutes d'eau , Cascades artificielles and Cataractes .

    Conversely, the specifics of English mean that one RVM (Topics) authority will correspond to several LCSH equivalents. For example, the topical subdivision --Arbitrage , used for names of sports, is linked to 3 LCSH equivalents: -- Refereeing, --Umpiring and --Officiating, as English uses different words for the French term "arbitrage" depending on the sport in question.

  • What is automated translation of authorities?

    A service that

    • optimizes the document processing chain
    • provides users with a bilingual catalogue

     

    Subscribers to this plug-in can translate RVM (Topics) authorities found in bibliographic records from English to French and vice versa

    • one by one
    • by batch
    • by retrospective batch

     

    Subscribe to automated translation

  • How do I subscribe to RVM?

    You can subscribe to the various RVM products and services by filling out the subscription form.

  • What are the advantages of purchasing RVM thesauruses over subscribing to RVMWeb?

    The purchase and import of RVM thesauruses allow

    • RVM thesauruses to be integrated into your catalogue or content management system via FTP
    • modifications to authorities to be integrated into your catalogue or content management system every month
    • indexers to work in the interface they are familiar with

     

    RVMWeb subscription offers

    • more sophisticated search options
    • navigation through the semantic network of authorities (clickable broader terms, narrower terms and related terms)
    • authority records available for download individually
    • daily updates to the thesauruses
    • a user-friendly and intuitive online environment

  • After we purchase the RVM thesauruses, are we required to integrate all of them into our catalogue or content management system?

    Although the purchase of RVM thesauruses includes the 4 versions (RVM (Topics), RVMGF, RVMMEM and RVMGD), each organization is free to integrate the thesaurus files it needs, depending on its own technical specifications.

  • How do I submit an authority request (creation, équivalence or modification) to RVM?

    You can submit requests to RVM by filling out the Authority request form.

  • Does RVM offer training?

    The RVM team offers self-training tools designed for indexers. You will find them here (in French only).

  • What is the encoding format when downloading RVM records one by one or by batch from RVMWeb?

    RVM records are encoded in UTF-8. Before importing records into a MARC-8 system, they must be converted. The MarcEdit software produced by Terry Reese offers a way to convert UTF-8 records to MARC-8. It is freely available at: http://marcedit.reeset.net. 

  • How to ask an indexing question? 

    You have an indexing question? It can be submitted using the Contact Us form.

  • What do the different status mean in the Current authority requests table?

    • New : new request waiting to be assigned to a team member
    • On hold : assigned request and waiting for processing
    • In progress : in process request
    • Done : request processed, revised and available in RVMWeb

  • How to download RVMGF, RVMMEM and RVMGD thesaurus authorities?

    The technical information required to download the authorities of these 3 thesauruses in RVMWeb is available here.

  • How to optimize browsing on the RVMWeb site?

    In order to optimize browsing on the RVMWeb site, we suggest that you use the following versions of the different browsers :

    • Firefox version : 63.0 (October 23, 2018) and newer (64bits)
    • Chrome version : 70.0.3538.77 and newer (Official Build) (64 bits)
    • Edge version : 42.17134.1.0 / Edge HTML: 17.17134 (64 bits) build Windows10 no 1803
    • Safari version : 11.1.2 and newer for MAC