In this exercise you will work with the VTLS system for the University Library, to learn how to build queries that give good recall and precision. You will learn about phrases, thesauri, term selection, and the various fields that make up records about our books. Please send a copy of all results to the instructor by electronic mail or on paper, for review.
Your problem is to find all of the books in the library that deal with CD-ROM and to turn in a list of their titles and authors. You will probably find that this means you will have to make a number of queries, and screen the lists returned. As a secondary problem, you should, making use of any feature of VTLS that is of value, try to find the single best Boolean query you can, which finds as many of the relevant books as possible, but does not retrieve other works very much. This query can be long and complex if necessary, with many synonyms and conditions.
From the library, get the information sheet on VTLS, and study about word searching. This allows construction of Boolean queries.
For a good search, one must know a reasonable amount about the problem domain. One hint is that CD-ROMs are a type of optical disc (disk) first produced in 1985.
You may want to find synonyms, authors who have written widely in this area, Library of Congress Subject Headings that pertain, and also should consider year of publication.