Knowledge Organisation and Retrieval Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The Assertion is true and the Reason is false, as the key gives. Hierarchy based classification schemes play a major role in the organisation of the web, as in directories that arrange sites in a tree of subjects.

The Reason says that the hotlists retrieved by robot based search engines use the relevance of subject descriptors. That does not describe how robot based engines work, which is by matching words from the text of the pages, so (R) is false.

Answer: C

The Sector Device is an extension of the Octave Device. In Ranganathan's Colon Classification, the Octave Device lets a notation use the nine digits and then continue after 9 with a further digit, and a sector device allows a part of the notation to be treated as a separate sector so that the scheme can keep expanding.

The Gap Device, the Empty Device and the Group Notation Device are different notational devices (they leave gaps, use empty digits, or notate groups of isolates), so none is the one of which the Sector Device is an extension.

Answer: C

The keyed answer is the third option, a Kernel Title. The string 'Control, Disease, Malaria, Brain' is not a sentence-like title: it is a bare series of significant subject terms, which is what remains when a title is reduced to its kernel terms in title-based indexing.

A raw title is the title exactly as the author wrote it, an expressive title is a fuller natural-language statement of the subject, and a transformed title is one rearranged by a rule such as rotation. None of those fits a plain list of key terms, so the first, second and fourth options are wrong.

Answer: B

The correct DDC pairing is a-ii, b-iii, c-i, d-iv, the second option. Education is 370, medicine is 610, photography is 770 and astronomy is 520 in the Dewey Decimal Classification.

The other options exchange these numbers; for instance, option A gives education 610 and medicine 770, and option D gives education 520. Remembering that 370 is education, 610 medicine (applied sciences), 770 photography (arts) and 520 astronomy (natural sciences) settles it.

Answer: A

The correct pairing is a-iii, b-iv, c-ii, d-i, the first option. A catalogue is the key to a given collection; a bibliography is the key to literary sources on a subject; an index represents subject concepts; an abstract is a condensation of a document.

Options B, C and D each wrongly pair at least one, for example calling an index the key to a collection or an abstract the representation of subject concepts.

Answer: C

The order by year of publication is Five Laws of Library Science (1931), Colon Classification (1933), Classified Catalogue Code (1934) and Prolegomena to Library Classification (1937): iii, i, iv, ii, the third option.

Option A puts the catalogue code before the Colon Classification, option B begins with the catalogue code, and option D starts with the Colon Classification, so each breaks this order.

Answer: C

The search is free text searching.

In free text searching any word in the record, title, abstract or full text, can be used as a search term in natural language, with no controlled vocabulary.

An alphabetical collateral search, a multi-aspect search and a streaming search are not the usual names for this method. A multi-aspect search combines several facets of a topic in a query, which is different from using natural language words from the whole record.

Answer: C

The ASK model was proposed by N.J. Belkin (printed J.N. Belkin).

Nicholas Belkin proposed the Anomalous State of Knowledge model in 1980: a user has a gap in knowledge that he cannot specify exactly, so the retrieval system has to help him express it.

Ingwersen is known for a cognitive model of interactive retrieval, Saracevic for a stratified interaction model and for relevance research, and Ellis for his model of information seeking behaviour.

Answer: A

The Cranfield tests were carried out under C.W. Cleverdon.

Cyril Cleverdon directed the Cranfield experiments, which compared indexing languages and introduced the measures of recall and precision for evaluating retrieval systems.

Gerard Salton is associated with the SMART retrieval system, Blair and Maron with a study of full text retrieval in a legal case, and Ellen Voorhees with the TREC evaluation campaigns. They did not lead the Cranfield tests.

Answer: D

The name is rendered as De Voto, Bernardo Augustine.

In the Anglo-American rules a name with a prefix like De is entered under the prefix in English, and the rest of the name follows the comma in its natural order. The entry word is therefore De Voto, and the forenames follow as Bernardo Augustine.

Option A enters under Voto and breaks up the forenames, option B drops Bernardo from its place in the name order, and option C puts the comma in the wrong place, which makes the surname the forenames.