ISYS 105 (Val Yonker)

Final Exam Notes

 

1)      Why do we do requirements analysis?

Requirements analysis is performed to outline the needs and knowledge of the user. 

 

2)      What makes requirements analysis important to classification and indexing?

You learn how they organize information.  They language they use is also important.  How they communicate.

 

3)      What are the problems a search engine faces?

Relevancy – how much it has to do with the topic you are looking for.

Freshness (of information) – how up-to-date the information is.

Coverage – how much of the web is accessed (about 1/3).

 

4)      What are the 2 types of abstracts?

Informative – Gives actual information that can be used.  It is a first level resource

Indicative – lets you know if you want to read the resource, but not enough information to use as a first level resource.

 

5)      What are the levels of resources?

First level – where you get actual information you need

·        Books

·        Journal articles

·        Human experts

Second level – Points you to a first level resource

·        Card catalogue

·        Librarian

Third level – points you to a second level resource

·        Librarian that points you to a card catalogue

·        Hagerdy library website

 

6)      What is a surrogate?

A substitute or representation

            i.e. Phone book or bibliographic database

Needs 2 things be successful

·        Name

·        Location

 

7)      What is classification?

A way of grouping like items together.  The items must be logical – all parts of the same thing.

 

 

 

8)      What is indexing?

“An organized guide to the intellectual content and physical location of resources.” –Val Yonker (exact definition of indexing) ß MUST KNOW!

 

A way of accessing and retrieving information based on its content.  The indexing is usually based on the fallowing:

·        Organized

·        What the document is about

·        Location

Indexing is also more flexible then classification.  It does not have to be logically related, unlike classification.

 

9)      What are the important parts of classification?

Browsability – How easy it is to look through and find similar items, or like items grouped together.

Logical consistency – Information is related to the information around it in a predictable way.

Expandability/Flexibility – How easy it is to add new items.  How expandable it can become to include new categories.

Comprehensiveness – There is a place for every item.  There are no hanging, in the air, items.

Avoid ambiguity – Logical consistency takes care of this problem.

 

10)  What are the two types of indexing languages?

Controlled – Predetermined subject categories organized, using descriptors, in a thesaurus.

·        Takes care of bugs in communication

·        Expensive to create and maintain

·        Polysemy terms are defined

·        Related terms

·        Extensive requirements analysis

·        People are involved

Uncontrolled (Natural language) – Uses a keyword system of descriptors. Indexes  a system based on descriptor words.

·        Fast

·        Information is easily accessible

·        Users can use the language of their own field

·        Avoids translation problems

·        New ideas are more easily accessible

·        Not as expensive as controlled

·        Has “bugs” in communication

o       Polysemy – one term that has more then one meaning

o       Synonymy – two or more words have the same meaning

o       Level of specificity – context in detail

 

11)  What is an abstract?

An abbreviated, accurate representation of a document without added in\interpretation or criticism

·        2 types of Abstract

o       Indicative: gives enough info about the content of the document so the user can decide whether or not to obtain the document

o       Informative: provides info about the content of the document as well as some substantive information

·        An abstract should:

o       Not contain anything that is not present in the document

o       Be objective not interpretive or evaluative

o       Represent the ideas of the author

o       Be balanced to the entire document

 

12)  What are Metatags?

 

Metatags: example of metadata

Metadata: data about data

·        A location with in the header of an HTML document that can contain keywords and other content descriptive information about the web page

·        Keywords: this tag provides key words for the search engine to associate with the web page

·        Description: this tag returns a description of the page in place of the summary the search engine would provide

Directories

·        Yahoo (example)

·        Spamming: falsely loaded web tags