Information, Communication and Information Policy Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The chairman associated with the National Policy on Library and Information Systems of 1986 was D. P. Chattopadhyay, option B. He chaired the group that framed the policy document, which was placed before Parliament in 1986 as the national statement on libraries, documentation and information services.

D. N. Banerjee (option A) was a noted library scholar who wrote on classification and the social role of libraries, but he did not head this policy exercise. Sam Pitroda (option C) is known for his work in telecommunications and chaired the National Knowledge Commission later. Kalpana Dasgupta (option D) is a Kolkata library professional and educator. Only D. P. Chattopadhyay is tied to the 1986 policy.

Answer: D

The major driving forces behind an information society are I.C.T. and the Internet, which is option D, statements (ii) and (iii). Information and communication technology provides the tools for creating and handling information, and the Internet provides the worldwide network through which it flows, so together they drive the shift to an information society.

Right to Information (i) is a legal provision that supports transparency in a democracy, not a technological driver. The Information Technology Act (iv) is a law that regulates e-commerce and cyber activity. Options A, B and C each include one of these two, so they are wrong.

Answer: B

The correct order of enactment is the revised Copyright Act, the Information Technology Act, the Freedom of Information Act and the Right to Information Act, option B, (iii), (iv), (i), (ii). The Copyright Act was revised in 1999, the Information Technology Act was passed in 2000, the Freedom of Information Act in 2002 and the Right to Information Act in 2005.

Option A places the Right to Information Act before the earlier laws, option C starts with it, and option D starts with the Freedom of Information Act, so each breaks the chronology. Option B is the only one that runs in order of date.

Answer: D

ANSI is the American National Standards Institute, BIS is the Bureau of Indian Standards and BSI is the British Standards Institution; each is the national standards body of its country, and all three issue standards that libraries and publishers follow, for example for documentation and bibliographic description. ESPN is a sports television network and has nothing to do with standards, so it is the odd one out. Option (D) is therefore the answer, and the other three are a group of one kind.

Answer: B

A national information policy needs a legislative framework, so that the policy has the force of law, an advisory and administrative body to guide and carry it out, and the ICT infrastructure to carry information to its users. The production of a national bibliography is a task of the national library, done under a copyright or delivery of books law, and not a prerequisite of a policy. So that is the item that is not a prerequisite, option (B).

Answer: B

The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is a specialised agency of the United Nations, with its headquarters in Geneva, that deals with patents, copyright, trademarks and other intellectual property. UNESCO is a different UN agency, one for education, science and culture, and the other options, a 'U.S. Organization' and an 'International Law Organization', are not what WIPO is. The answer is United Nations, option (B).

Answer: A

Redundancy in information theory is the repetition in a message beyond what is needed to carry it. It is not wholly waste: redundancy helps against noise, since a repeated or predictable part of a message lets the receiver recover what was lost or garbled. So the key regards it as necessary and sometimes useful. The options calling it unnecessary and to be eliminated, or unnecessary but unavoidable, miss this, and 'always desirable' goes too far. The answer is option (C).

Answer: B

In the information transfer cycle, the Internet acts as a primary publisher, because authors can put their own papers on it, as a secondary publisher, because abstracting and indexing services and directories are offered on it, and as a primary distributor, because it carries documents to readers. So (i), (ii) and (iv) are correct. The key does not count it as a tertiary publisher, which would mean guides to the literature of secondary sources. The answer is option (B).

Answer: A

Even though information is considered a commodity, libraries are not sound in finances, so (A) is true. The reason says that all types of libraries have failed in promoting information as a commodity, and the word 'all' makes it false, as some libraries and information centres have charged for information and sold it. So (A) is true and (R) is false, option (A). The options that call (A) false or both false are wrong.

Answer: B

The scientist is Fritz Machlup. Machlup, with Una Mansfield, described information science as a cluster of many disciplines in which information is the central core, and this is the view the question quotes.

B.C. Brooks is known for the fundamental equation of information science, Daniel Bell for the idea of the information society, and N.J. Belkin for the anomalous state of knowledge. Each worked on information, but none is the source of the cluster-of-disciplines statement, so those options are wrong.