Page 223 - DLIS002_KNOWLEDGE ORGANIZATION CLASSIFICATION AND CATALOGUING THEORY

Knowledge Organization: Classification and Cataloguing Theory

Notes part of “Universities’ . Consequently, the above string is to be revised by coding
”
”
“universities” with the operator and “libraries with (p).
In order to achieve the principle of “Context dependency”, a “Two-Line-Three-Part” entry format
is followed. This entry format allows indicating the simultaneous relationship of the terms
listed in the string and sets every term in its context.

“Lead” is occupied by approach term or filing term and is offered as the user’s access point
in the index. This is printed in bold face to emphasise its significance as the primary filing
element.
“Qualifier” position is occupied by the terms) that sets the “Lead” into its wider context.
The “Lead” and the “Qualifier” together is called “Heading”.

“Display” position is occupied by the term(s) of narrower context.

Did u know? The “Qualifier” and “Display” positions are not necessarily occupied in all
index entries.
The standard vocabulary used in PRECIS incorporates the following aspects:

It is a structured vocabulary that includes the types of semantic relationship of equivalence,
hierarchical and associative terms.

In PRECIS, the syntax and semantics are treated as separate components, and are handled by
different procedures. The semantic aspects of PRECIS, i.e. establishing inter-relationships between
the terms such as synonyms, BT, NT, and other related terms in a machine-held thesaurus serves
as the source of “see” and “see also” references in the index.

However, a valid associative relationship is not always self-evident. In fact, there is no clear
criterion to decide this relationship between concepts. In PRECIS, it is considered that two terms
are linked by the associative relationship if they share an obvious semantic connection; they are
not displaying either equivalence or hierarchical relationships. They are related in the sense if
one thinks of one of the terms; the other term automatically strikes the mind. If “ichthyology”
”
is the term referring to the name of a Discipline, “Fish is its object of study, which strikes the
mind automatically. An information retrieval thesaurus displays these types of relationships
between concepts in an organized manner.

Self Assessment

State whether the following statements are true or false:
11. PRECIS (Preserved Context Index System) was designed and developed by Derek Austin
by about 1950.

12. The indexer’s responsibility would not be to prepare the input strings and not to give
necessary instructions to the computer to generate indexes according to a definite format.
13. The formation of subject headings in PRECIS is done in four stages.

14. The use of Codes in an input string enables to bring expressive terms in the resulting
index entries.
15. The most important aspect of PRECIS is the preparation of input string by the human
indexer.

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