Information Sources Questions and Answers

Answer: C

INSPEC deals with Physics and Engineering.

INSPEC (Information Service in Physics, Electrotechnology, Computers and Control), produced by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (formerly the IEE) since 1967, is the major abstracting and indexing database for physics, electrical and electronic engineering, computing, control engineering and information technology.

It does not cover psychology (that is PsycINFO), English literature, philosophy or ethnography. Each wrong option pairs subjects from the humanities or social sciences that fall outside INSPEC's scope.

Answer: D

The most useful source for decision-making is the State-of-the-Art Report.

A state-of-the-art report surveys and evaluates the current position of a subject or technology: what has been achieved, what the options are and where things are heading. It condenses a large body of literature into a judgement that a manager can act on, which is why such reports are prized by planners and decision-makers.

Textbooks present settled background knowledge, not the current position. Newspapers and newsletters report events piecemeal and without evaluation, so they inform but do not support a decision the way a critical review does.

Answer: A

e-Pathshala is an open access source for various courses.

e-PG Pathshala, an initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development under the National Mission on Education through ICT, is run by the UGC with INFLIBNET. It offers free, peer-reviewed e-content modules (text, video and self-assessment) for postgraduate courses in many subjects, including library and information science.

It is not a commercial database, since the content is free to all. Nor is it merely a directory of institutions or a list of courses; it holds the course content itself.

Answer: D

The correct matching is a-ii, b-i, c-iv, d-iii.

• Books in Print, published by R.R. Bowker, lists books available from publishers: a trade bibliography.
• Ulrich's International Periodicals Directory is the standard bibliography of periodicals.
• The World of Learning lists universities, learned societies, research institutes, libraries and museums worldwide: a directory.
• Who's Who in India gives short lives of prominent living people: a biographical source.

The other codes swap at least one of these, for example making Books in Print a biographical source.

Answer: B

The NISCAIR database is NUCSSI.

The National Union Catalogue of Scientific Serials in India was built by INSDOC, which merged with NISCOM in 2002 to form NISCAIR. It records which Indian libraries hold which scientific and technical journals, so that a user or a document delivery service can locate a copy.

The other options are not NISCAIR's. Medline is the biomedical bibliographic database of the US National Library of Medicine, and Scopus is Elsevier's commercial abstracting and citation database. ULCSS is not the name of the INSDOC union catalogue the question refers to.

Answer: C

Facts on File covers World events.

The Facts On File World News Digest has appeared weekly since 1940 and summarises news from around the world, with a cumulative index. It is a standard current-affairs reference source, used by libraries to check what happened and when.

Although it is published in the United States, its scope is international, so 'American events' is too narrow. Indian and British events are included only as part of world coverage, so neither of those options describes what the digest covers.

Answer: C

TechXtra is a free gateway to learning resources and to articles, books and industry news, so the answer is (i), (iii) and (iv) are true.

TechXtra, run by Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, was a free service that brought together resources in engineering, mathematics and computing. It let users find articles, books, technical reports, theses, learning and teaching resources, and the latest industry news, through one search.

Because it was free, (ii) 'Commercial Gateway Service' is wrong, which rules out the two options that include (ii). The last option reverses the verdict by calling (i), (iii) and (iv) false, so it is wrong too.

Answer: B

The key is Online interactive tutorials.

Option B describes LOTSS as a set of online interactive tutorials, which is how the University keyed it. The other options give a database, an indexing and abstracting service, and a spelled-out name for the letters, none of which the key accepts. The expansion in option C, Library of Technology and Social-Sciences, reads like a guess built from the letters.

What could not be confirmed: searches found no page that defines LOTSS, so what the acronym stands for was not verified. The explanation follows the key and does not claim a source for it.

Answer: D

Grey literature is literature which is semipublished.

Grey literature means material that is produced and circulated but not through commercial publishing and bookselling channels: technical and research reports, theses and dissertations, conference papers, working papers, government documents and trade literature. It is hard to identify and acquire because it lacks normal bibliographic control, which is why it is called semi-published.

The name has nothing to do with the colour of the binding. Classified material is restricted, not semi-published, and literature yet to be published is forthcoming literature, not grey literature.

Answer: A

The Census of India is a numerical database.

A numerical (or numeric) database holds statistical figures rather than references or text. The Census tabulates counts of population by age, sex, literacy, occupation, religion, household amenities and so on, for every administrative unit, so its content is numbers to be retrieved and analysed.

It is not bibliographical, since it does not describe documents; not full text, since the user is after the figures rather than a document's text; and not pictorial, since its core is tables, not images or maps.