Knowledge Organisation and Retrieval Questions and Answers

Answer: A

(A) is true but (R) is false.

Assertion A states Ranganathan's Canon of Helpful Sequence correctly: the order of classes in an array, and of isolates in an array of isolates, should be helpful to the people for whom the scheme is meant.

Reason R is false. Classification schemes are designed for a library's community of users, or a type of library, not separately for each individual user; a scheme made for each person would defeat the purpose of a shared, standard arrangement. R also does not follow from A, which speaks of the purpose of users as a group.

Answer: A

(A) is true but (R) is false.

POPSI, the Postulate-based Permuted Subject Indexing developed by G. Bhattacharyya at DRTC, Bangalore, is a subject indexing system. It is based on Ranganathan's general theory of classification, but it produces subject headings independently of any classification scheme. So A is true.

R is false: POPSI is not the method of preparing the index to Colon Classification. The alphabetical subject index derived from a CC class number is made by Ranganathan's chain indexing.

Answer: C

(A) is true, but (R) is false.

Resource Description and Access (RDA), published in 2010 and adopted by major libraries from 2013, is a content standard for describing resources, built on the FRBR model. It was designed to replace AACR2. Assertion A is true.

Reason R is false: AACR2 is itself a content standard, a set of rules for what information to record in a catalogue entry and how to formulate it. RDA replaced one content standard with another, so it is wrong to say AACR2 is not one.

Answer: D

The characteristics of an ontology are (i), (ii) & (iii).

An ontology is a formal, explicit specification of the concepts in a domain and the relationships between them. Like a thesaurus it controls the vocabulary of a field (i); it allows a concept to be reached and related through several entries and relationships (ii); and it is created and maintained with software tools and languages such as Protege and OWL (iii).

Statement (iv) is false: an ontology does define its concepts, with their properties and relations, which is what makes it more than a word list. Every option including (iv) is therefore wrong.

Answer: A

Linked Data helps with (i) & (ii): polysemy and homonymy.

Polysemy (one word with several related meanings) and homonymy (different words with the same form, such as 'bank' of a river and a money bank) cause false drops in keyword retrieval. Linked Data identifies each thing or concept by its own URI, so 'Java' the island and 'Java' the programming language are different resources, and a search can be about the concept rather than the word.

Antonymy (words of opposite meaning) and rhyming are not the ambiguity problems of information retrieval that unique identifiers solve.

Answer: A

Nano-technology is an example of growth by Fusion.

Ranganathan described several modes in which new subjects form. In fusion, two or more subjects merge so that each loses its separate identity in the new subject. Nanotechnology combines physics, chemistry, biology and engineering at the nanometre scale into a single field, and is the common example of fusion.

Fission is the splitting of a subject into narrower subjects, lamination the building of a subject by adding facets in layers, and loose assemblage the study of relations between subjects that keep their identity.

Answer: D

The code based on the ICCP is AACR-I.

The International Conference on Cataloguing Principles, held in Paris in 1961, adopted the Paris Principles on the choice and form of headings. The first edition of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (1967) was the first major code built on them.

Cutter's Rules for a Dictionary Catalogue (1876), the Vatican Code (printed 'Vetican', 1931) and Ranganathan's Classified Catalogue Code (1934) all came before the 1961 conference, so none could be based on its principles.

Answer: C

Web documents are catalogued using Dublin Core.

The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, developed from a 1995 workshop in Dublin, Ohio, defines 15 simple elements (title, creator, subject, date, format and so on) for describing web resources. It was designed for exactly this purpose and is used in repositories and digital libraries.

ISBD sets standard descriptions for printed and other materials, CCF is UNESCO's Common Communication Format for exchanging bibliographic records, and ISO 2709 is a record structure for data exchange; none was designed for describing web documents.

Answer: B

In Colon Classification, Geology is H.

In Ranganathan's Colon Classification the main classes include G for Biology, H for Geology, I for Botany, J for Agriculture, K for Zoology and L for Medicine. So the basic subject Geology takes the class number H.

G is Biology and I is Botany, which are the neighbouring classes and the usual traps. HX is not the class number for the basic subject.

Answer: D

Classification works on (i) the idea plane, (iii) the verbal plane and (iv) the notational plane.

Ranganathan's dynamic theory of classification identifies three planes of work: the idea plane, where subjects are analysed and arranged; the verbal plane, where they are expressed in terms; and the notational plane, where they are represented by class numbers.

There is no 'natural plane' in this theory, so every code including (ii) is wrong.