Page 222 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Unit 11: Chain Procedure

the terms. Role Operators also serve as computer instructions for determining the format, Notes
typography and punctuation associated with each index entry.

Notes In addition to the Scheme of Role Operators, the use of Codes in an input string
enables to bring expressive terms in the resulting index entries.
PRECIS is considered to be the first computerized pre-coordinate indexing model. The steps in
these processes are:

Content analysis of documents to determine their specific subject;
Selecting appropriate indexing terms;
Determining the role or status of each indexing term and putting the terms into the input
string to fall into a sequence, based-upon the application of Role operators of PRECIS;
Generation of index entries; and
Alphabetical arrangement of entries.

As has been pointed out earlier, content analysis of documents is an activity independent of any
indexing technique. The most important aspect of PRECIS is the preparation of input string by
the human indexer, where each term is prefixed by a notation or the Role Operators that indicates
how each term has to function, either as a lead term or lead-in term.
Let us take the following document title for the purpose of demonstrating the stages of concept
analysis and assigning the appropriate role operators to prepare an input string.
Document Title: Reference Services in University Libraries in India.
1. Identify the concept signifying an action (if there be any). In the above example, the action
concept is denoted by the term “Reference Services” and this term should be prefixed by
the operator.

2. Identify the kind of action represented by the term, i.e. whether transitive action or
intransitive action “Reference services” is clearly a transitive action since it is capable of
taking an object. The object of transitive action is considered as the key system and is
coded by the operator. In the present example, it is the “University libraries” which
represents the object of action, so the input string would be
University libraries
Reference services
3. The term “India” signifies the environment (i.e. geographical location) in which the whole
thing takes place. Accordingly, the operator (0) is to be prefixed to this concept and the
resulting input string would be

(0) India
(1) university libraries
(2) reference services
According to PRECIS, an input string must contain any one of Primary Operators 0 to 3 or
combination of them.
4. The next step is to identify whether there is any other concepts which may be denoted by
”
any of the operators from 4 to 6 or by secondary operators. Here the term “libraries is the

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