Assignment Code: MLII-101/AST/TMT/ Jul. 2022/Jan.2023

Course Code: MLII-101

Assignment Name: Information Sources, Systems and Services

Year: 2022-2023

Verification Status: Verified by Professor

1.1 What are the sources of information? Describe in detail various types of information sources with examples. (10)

Ans) Information sources are the places where we get the information we need. Documents, institutions and organisations, and people are some of these sources. For example, we use a dictionary to find out what a word means. Students contact an institution to get into a certain course of study. And people talk to a priest to set a date for their wedding. The field of library and information science uses the term "information sources." Most of what librarians and information scientists do is work with sources of information.

Types of information sources

Documentary Sources of Information

Documentary sources are all sources that come in the form of documents. In the past few years, the word "document" has taken on a whole new meaning. It now includes books, magazines, manuscripts, videotapes, computer files, and databases, among other things.

Maps: A map is a piece of paper or something similar that shows the surface of the earth or part of it. It shows countries, oceans, seas, mountains, rivers, deserts, roads, and other features.

Computer files: A file is a group of records or programmes that are saved under one filename. For a library catalogue to be computerised, we make a record for each book in a computer. All of these files are kept in a computer under one name.

Non-Documentary Sources of Information

We can get information from people and organisations that aren't in the form of documents.

a) Humans

There are many categories under "humans," but we will only look at the following ones:

Consultants – A consultant is a professional who usually gets paid to give advice. There are many different kinds of consultants, such as legal consultants, engineering consultants, consulting physicians, and so on. When there is a court case, we ask a legal consultant for advice.

Resource Persons – Depending on the situation, the term "resource person" can mean different things. A resource person usually makes a programme better.

b) Organisations

Organizations are also very important information sources. There are different kinds of organisations, and the information they give is also different. Most of the time, we can trust information that comes from an organisation. Types of organisations and the different kinds of information they can give.

Libraries and Information Centres (LICs) – LICs may be the most common place where people get information. People like researchers, scholars, teachers, students, and even regular people go to libraries to find the information they need.

Referral Centres – A referral centre is an organisation that helps people looking for information find the right places to get it, like libraries, information centres, and people who are likely to have the information. Most of the time, a referral centre doesn't give out information or documents.

2.1 Describe different types of reference services. Discuss in detail long range reference service.

Ans) There are two types of reference services passive and active. A passive reference service is one in which the information centre gets reference books, reports, and data and makes them available to the public. This is where the user can look for the information he or she needs. It works more like a library's reference room. An active reference service is when a staff member looks for the information for the user instead of the user looking for it on his or her own. Facts can be taken from a number of different documents and given to the user. Here, the people doing the search should know something about the subject.

Long range reference service

Dr. S.R. Ranganathan stressed that Long Range Reference Service is more used in public and Reference Service special libraries. It is not practised in every library. School libraries have no reference service but it is much more needed in technical and industrial libraries.

Long range reference service involve:

1. Much time

2. Normal guidance

3. For research scholars, scientists or special readers

4. In higher education.

Need of Long Range Reference Service:

There is a need of long range reference service at every step in a library. There are many reasons of it, some of which are discussed below:

It saves the time of the readers and experts: Time is precious for an expert and research scholars. They try to finish their research in minimum time to get the current result. But most of their time is spent in literature search. They search the literature to know the latest development in their respective fields. If librarian helps in literature search, it will save the time of the researchers and the experts.

Knowledge explosion: 20th century is a period of knowledge explosion. The literature is being produced in each subject field and it is very difficult to study the whole literature. Libraries build selected literature suited to the readers. Libraries purchase a good number of literature and reader is always eager to know the details and whereabouts of the literature received in library or published anywhere in the country or the world.

Complexity of information sources: Information sources are many and full of complexities. Every information source has different arrangement, style of presentation, language barrier, which is not known to readers. Reference librarian with his abilities provides all information’s to the readers.

Information sources of other libraries: No library is complete in itself. It is also not possible for a single library to house the whole literature published. Libraries take help of other libraries for using their information sources. Each library has limited funds. Information sources are in huge number which cannot be procured by one library.

3.1 Discuss the various information systems and programmes available in the area of social science in India.

Ans) The Government of India's Ministry of Human Resource Development (which used to be called the Ministry of Education) set up the Indian Council of Social Science Research (ICSSR) in 1969 to help social science research in the country. The ICSSR is an independent body that supports social science research projects and programmes in the country. It gives grants to institutions and individuals, gives fellowships, sponsors and arranges technical training in research methodology, and gives advice on research. It also builds and supports library and documentation centres that provide information services in the social sciences, puts on seminars, workshops, and study groups, and publishes in the social sciences. The council looks at how research is going and tells the government of India what to do about anything related to social science research in the country. The Council's main office is in New Delhi, and it has 27 Research Centres and 6 Regional Centres all over India. The Council has put out more than 350 books, pamphlets, and monographs that cover a wide range of social science topics. It puts out a journal called "Journal of Abstracts and Reviews" twice a year in five fields: economics, geography, political science, psychology, sociology, and social anthropology. It works with the Indian Institute of Public Administration in New Delhi and the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad to publish "Documentation in Public Administration" and "Vikalpa," two quarterly journals. In January 1999, the Council began publishing the "Indian Social Science Review," which is a scholarly journal. The Council also puts out a newsletter every three months that talks about the Center, Research Institutes, and Regional Centres' major programmes and activities.

As a part of ICSSR, the National Social Science Documentation Centre (NASSDOC) was set up in 1969 to help the social science community with its libraries and information needs. Over the years, the Centre, which has a large number of resources for information in the social sciences, has grown into a national centre with the following goals:

1. To help researchers in the social sciences with their library needs and information needs.

2. To help people who work in academic institutions, independent research groups, policymaking, planning, and research units in government departments, business and industry, and other places with information.

3. To tell people about what's going on in social science research.

4. To give advice to the libraries of ICSSR Regional Centres and Research Institutions that are run by ICSSR.

5. To give money to projects that help with documentation and bibliography.

6. To give social scientists, research scholars, librarians, and IT professionals short-term training courses.

7. To give doctoral students study grants so they can get research materials from libraries in different parts of the country.

4.1 Enumerate the different components of mass media. Explain the role of media persons as sources of information. (10)

Ans) Components of mass media as follows:

Print Media: The main purpose of print media, especially daily newspapers, is to inform, influence, and shape public opinion on all big issues that matter to the public. The daily newspaper is the most important print medium for getting information to a large number of people. There are different versions of daily newspapers. Some of the best newspaper companies publish their daily papers from different cities so that they can focus on news, events, and activities in their own areas. There are weekly magazines, special ads, and other supplements in Sunday editions.

Radio Broadcasting: From the beginning of this century until the middle of the 1950s, radio broadcasting was the only way for people to get entertainment and information. Like other types of media, radio stations broadcast news around the clock and give news summaries, reviews, analyses, and critical comments on current events and activities. They also have entertainment programmes like music, serials, plays, and many programmes that are of general interest to women, children, farmers, industrialists, and useful information for children of different ages.

Television: Television is the most important thing in our lives. It is a new mass medium that is growing and changing quickly to become very sophisticated. It draws in both young and old people because it has both pictures and sounds. In fact, it has such a big effect on young people that sociologists worry about the bad things it might do to them. It does almost everything a media does and does everything it can to change the way people and groups act.

Audio -Visual Media: Among the many audio-visual media used in mass communication, the videocassettes, CD- Rom and DVD are most influential. They are easy for people to use and are linked to both individual and group use. Many of these audio-visual media are designed with great care and the audio support enhances their value to a very great extent. CD- ROM and DVD (Digitised Versatile Disc) are extremely valuable for archival purposes. They don't take up much room. A complete set of encyclopaedias can fit on a single CD with room to spare.

Role of media persons as sources of information

Work in the media is done as a team, and everyone on the team should know where they belong and how to help the team reach its goal. The expertise, experience, and knowledge of media people are never properly recorded, so they are hard to find. This is a good enough reason to talk to people in the media as a source of information. It is responsibility of a media person to give as much as right and authentic information

5.0 Write short notes on any two of the following: (10)

a) Machine Translation

Ans) Machine translation (MT) is when computers are used to translate text from one natural language to another. In an MT system, a computer programme looks at the text in one language, called the "source text," and then makes a similar text in another language, called the "target text," without any help from a person. The translation process involves decoding the meaning of the "source text" and recoding it in the "target text." Behind this simple step, though, is a complex set of mental processes. For example, to figure out the full meaning of a text, the translator must interpret and analyse all of its parts. This requires a deep understanding of both the grammar, semantics, syntax, idioms, and culture of the source language. For the translator to re-encode the meaning in the target language, he or she needs to have the same level of knowledge. Therein lies the challenge of MT systems: how to programme a computer to "understand" a text the way a human does and to "create" a new text in the target language that "sounds" like it was written by a human. Several things have been done to solve this problem.

b) Information intermediaries

Ans) For a working definition of information intermediaries, it would be helpful to look at why the different types of intermediaries are needed. The situations that led to the need for specialised types of information services that are based on needs and put the user first. For example, people in R&D, industry, business, higher education, management of institutions and organisations, government ministries and departments, and even regular people for their day-to-day activities all need information for their specific needs. In fact, there is no activity where information is not a vital part. More specifically, in the current situation of demand-based information markets, there is a need for a group of experts who act as middlemen to bring together information producers and information consumers. This is similar to how a trading situation for consumer goods brings the producer and the consumer together. Information is also a good that can be bought and sold, so customer satisfaction is important and depends on how useful the information is.