Knowledge Organisation and Retrieval Questions and Answers

Answer: B

Distillation forms subjects such as Management Sciences.

Among Ranganathan's modes of formation of subjects, distillation is the process by which a new subject emerges when the methods or principles common to many subjects are drawn out and studied in their own right. Management science, distilled from the management of many kinds of enterprise, and research methodology are the standard examples.

Natural, physical and biological sciences are traditional main classes formed by the ordinary division of knowledge (dissection or lamination), not by distilling a common element out of many fields.

Answer: A

Dublin Core represents Metadata.

The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, named after the 1995 workshop in Dublin, Ohio, is a simple standard of fifteen elements, such as Title, Creator, Subject, Date and Format, for describing digital and physical resources. It is maintained by the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and is an ISO standard (ISO 15836).

It is not a library, not an indexing technique (though its records support retrieval), and not a serial publication.

Answer: D

Metadata is Data: data about data.

Metadata is structured information that describes, explains or locates another resource, for example the title, author, date, format and subject of a document. A catalogue record is metadata about a book, and a Dublin Core record is metadata about a web resource. It is still data, but data whose subject is other data.

A search engine and a website are systems that may use metadata, not metadata itself. An index is one kind of tool built from metadata, so it is narrower than the general definition.

Answer: D

FAST is an enumerative and faceted schema for subject headings.

FAST, Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, was developed by OCLC with the Library of Congress. It takes the vocabulary of the Library of Congress Subject Headings and reorganises it into separate facets (topical, geographic, chronological, form, personal and corporate names and so on), so that headings are enumerated in an authority file but applied facet by facet.

It is not a classification scheme, not a retrieval model, and not a set of cataloguing rules for e-resources. It is a subject heading system.

Answer: C

The kinds of mnemonics are (a), (c), (d): scheduled, seminal and systematic.

Ranganathan classified mnemonics, the aids that let the same idea be represented by the same digits wherever it occurs, into kinds that include scheduled mnemonics (a common schedule such as the time or space schedule used throughout a scheme), systematic mnemonics (the same sequence of ideas arranged in the same order), seminal mnemonics (the same seminal idea represented by the same digit across categories) and verbal or alphabetical mnemonics.

'Special mnemonics' is not one of his kinds, so every option including (b) is wrong.

Answer: A

Statements (a), (b), (c) are correct.

EAD, Encoded Archival Description, is a standard for encoding archival finding aids (a), and it is expressed in XML for use in archival and manuscript repositories (b). It was designed to work with the International Council on Archives' descriptive standard ISAD(G), implementing its recommendations (c).

Statement (d) is wrong. EAD is maintained by the Library of Congress together with the Society of American Archivists. The DDI Alliance maintains the Data Documentation Initiative standard for describing social science data. So every option with (d) is wrong.

Answer: A

The order of publication is (a) (b) (c) (d).

1. ISBD (M), for monographs: 1971 (preliminary), the first ISBD.
2. ISBD (S), for serials: 1974.
3. ISBD (CM), for cartographic materials: 1977.
4. ISBD (CF), for computer files: 1990.

The ISBDs were developed one after another following the 1969 Copenhagen meeting of cataloguing experts, starting with monographs. ISBD (CF) came last because computer files were the newest kind of material. The ISBDs have since been consolidated into one edition.

Answer: B

The sequence is (c) (a) (b) (d): record label, directory, data fields, record separator.

ISO 2709, the exchange format on which MARC records are built, structures a record as a fixed-length record label (leader) of 24 characters, then a directory listing each field's tag, length and starting position, then the variable data fields themselves, and finally a record separator marking the end of the record.

The label must come first because it tells software how to read the rest, and the separator must come last. Only the second option keeps both in place.

Answer: D

The key's matching is (a)-(iv), (b)-(iii), (c)-(ii), (d)-(i).

The surest pairing is (c): in Ranganathan's terminology an isolate is a component of a facet, a single idea such as 'child' or 'India' that combines with a basic subject. Only the last option pairs isolate with 'component of facet', and the other pairs follow the terms as the key defines them: a facet as the totality of divisions produced by a train (chain) of characteristics, a train of characteristics as a set of characteristics in a categorised relationship, and a unitary class as a basic class combined with isolate ideas.

The other options give isolate the meaning of a facet, a unitary class or a train, which are larger or different units.

Answer: D

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

• E.C. Richardson: Classification: Theoretical and Practical (1901).
• E. Wyndham Hulme: Principles of Book Classification (1911-12), which introduced literary warrant.
• W.C. Berwick Sayers: Canons of Classification (1915).
• S.R. Ranganathan: Prolegomena to Library Classification (1937).

Prolegomena is unmistakably Ranganathan's, and only the last option gives it to him.