Evaluation about the cordel indexing from the concept map context

Abstract

Cordel is a European cultural product from the sixteenth century that migrated to Brazil in the nineteenth century. It was redesigned from the mentality and the Northeastern characteristics, thus it conveys its peculiarities in the thematic proposals and in its poetical format. This type of literature has been acquiring more and more visibility. In the past, it was treated as "second-hand'', but now it has been conquering its space and identity power over the years, indicating its noteworthy importance and resistance. Therefore, the twenty-first century is marked by the recognition of this document, which is present in its new selling environments (bookstores and malls), its use in textbooks and it has been used as object of study in dissertations and theses in the academic scenario. As the authors have been studying cordel since 2006 in the largest archive of the Americas, namely, Biblioteca de Obras Raras Átila Almeida (BORAA – Átila Almeida Library of Rare Works), which belongs to the Universidade Estadual de Paraíba (UEPB – State University of Paraíba), the interest in studies under the perspective of Information Science (IS) about cordel is narrowed. This study aims to understand the logic that is revealed while the indexers were choosing the terms in the cordel analysis from the conception of the concept map. This was used as a methodological strategy in order to outline the relations in the suggestion of theme description in 6 (six) cordéis from the perspective of two indexers who worked with such documents in previous pieces of research between 2009 and 2013. It was realized that the terms used by the indexers were almost similar. One indexer, specifically, made the option of both exhaustive and revocatory descriptors; the other one opted for broad terms. It can be concluded that IS needs to innovate concerning the analysis processes carried out in this study when allied the use of concept map with the cordel indexing.