School of Information Management & Systems. Spring 2003.
245 Organization of Information in Collections.   Michael Buckland

Past Tests.

CLOSED BOOK, IN-CLASS TEST - APRIL 2, 2002
One hour only. Answer any THREE questions, in any order. Ration your time. Try to give as complete an answer as you can within the limited time available. When applicable, use real or imaginary examples to illustrate your answers. In any answer, draw on any parts of the course that are relevant. Write legibly. Use clear English.

1. What are the differences between an alphabetical arrangement and a systematic arrangement? What are the advantages and disadvantages of each? Under what if any circumstances might you prefer to use an alphabetical arrangement? -- and when a systematic arrangement?

2. What are facets? How does one use them? When and how might a faceted approach be useful?

3. On what criteria should one decide how to express the values of an attribute?

4. How can set theory play a unifying role in the topics covered in this class.

5. Why is it hard to build a thesaurus? What are the differences between a good thesaurus and a bad one?

CLOSED BOOK, IN-CLASS TEST - MAY 2, 2001
One hour only. Answer any THREE questions, in any order. Ration your time. Try to give as complete an answer as you can within the limited time available. When applicable, use real or imaginary examples to illustrate your answers. In any answer, draw on any parts of the course that are relevant. Write legibly. Use clear English.

1. Why is construction of a thesaurus difficult?

2. The metadata in a database of (or about) objects can be viewed as composed of a set of attributes and sets of values. (i) Explain. (ii) If you were designing an information service, on what bases would you determine which set of attributes to use? (iii) What determines the sets of values?

3. "The organization of information in collections can be viewed in terms of a continuing tension between two conflicting principles: Enumerative orderings to find things and systematic arrangements to bring related items together." Explain and comment, using systems used or discussed during the semester.

4. The textbook distinguishes "access" from "description." Explain the difference. When might there be no difference?

5. What was "the main entry controversy" about? Under what circumstances, if any, would it matter whether there was a "main entry"?

CLOSED BOOK, IN-CLASS TEST - MARCH 20, 2000
One hour only. Answer all four questions, in any order. Ration your time. Try to give as complete an answer as you can within the limited time available. When applicable, use real or imaginary examples to illustrate your answers. In any answer, draw on any parts of the course that are relevant. Write legibly. Use clear English. Use of "outline form" is acceptable.

1. Either (a) How does the Dublin Core standard resemble or differ from the USMARC Bibliographic format? How is a record compliant with the former likely to be differ from one compliant with the latter?

Or (b) "To name is to frame." Explain in relation to metadata.

2. Either (a) What is meant by "controlled vocabulary"? How might control of vocabulary be established? – and how maintained over time?

Or (b) What are the challenges in providing topical ("subject") access?

3. Either (a) Explain the difference between "description" and "access points." Illustrate by reference to both digital and pre-digital retrieval systems.

Or (b) Illustrate how an Object – Attribute – Value structure might be used to build a representation of a SIMS course.

4. Identify, name, and explain as many different parts as you can of the components in the following fragment of a USMARC Bibliographic record.
    245     14     $aThe emperor's new clothes / $c by Hans Christian Andersen.

CLOSED BOOK, IN-CLASS TEST - MAY 8, 2000

One hour only. Answer any THREE questions, in any order. Ration your time. Try to give as complete an answer as you can within the limited time available. When applicable, use real or imaginary examples to illustrate your answers. In any answer, draw on any parts of the course that are relevant. Write legibly. Use clear English.

1. Explain what "facets" are. How are they used? Comment on the following statement: "LCSH subdivisions and Dewey Decimal Classification standard tables are primitive forms of faceting."

2. What is a thesaurus? How would you evaluate a thesaurus? What characteristics would make the difference between a good thesaurus and a bad thesaurus?

3. Someone has asked you to develop an SGML DTD for bibliographic records and says that you must provide a two-way mapping between it the MARC Bibliographic Format. What is an SGML DTD? What is meant by a two-way mapping? How would you set about providing what was requested? How would you know if you had succeeded?

4. What are AACR2, ISBD, and MARC? How are they related to each other?

5. What is "entry vocabulary"? Under what circumstances might entry vocabulary be a cause for concern? What can one do about it? What does "entry vocabulary" have to do with "intermediaries"?