Sunday 1 December 2013

Structure of Information

After learning about the first main step that is called” Task definition” of Big-6 and with full of intention of curiosity, our lecturer introduced a new topic that is known as “Structure of information”. We got the knowledge about the framework and what are the steps that we should implement to find factual and accurate information. Before going onwards, she told us about learning objectives that we learnt in this topic. The subtopics were about the differentiation of primary, secondary and tertiary source by using information. Now, we had proceeded to second step of Bog-6 that is called “Information seeking behavior”. She also reminded us nearby the two stages those are “determine range source” and prioritize sources”.
Information source:

                               It refers to any place, thing where user can get the information. It can be books, people, internet, website and many others information sources.  As we knew about the information source, so who is the producers of these information resources. There are many people such as, students, teacher, government and private sectors included profit organization and nonprofit organizations.
  Information source can be three types such as,

 1. Printed (Books, magazines, dictionaries etc.).
 2. Non printed (Wikipedia, Google, blogs).
 3. Interview or video
Primary source:
                        A primary resource is an original documents or known as first-hand information. This is the most reliable and factual information that enable the researcher to get as close as possible to the source.
Primary source information can be recognize in the form of,
Diaries, journals, autobiographies, speeches, historical documents such as birth certificate, government records, court documents, military records, publisher first-hand stories, recoding and interviews and many others.
Secondary source is a second hand information that conveys the experience of others. Actually, secondary source information is written about primary source. There are many secondary sources such as biography, Almanac and encyclopedia books.
Tertiary source is the distillation and collection of primary and secondary sources. It includes most types of references. There are three types of tertiary sources such as bibliographies of bibliography, directories of directories and guides to the literature.
After that, she gave us some sources for identification. we tried to recognize the sources and hopefully we identified most of them.  She also acknowledge about the newspaper and magazines articles. It can be primary or secondary source depend on the given situation.
Reference Sources:
                               Reference sources or materials that provide quick, factual information about the topic. They are designed to be consulted rather than read through. It can be books, serials, online database or internet. There are two types of reference sources, one is specific and other is general. They can provide definition and general information and arranged alphabetically, topically or chronological order. Encyclopedia, dictionaries, directories, Atlases and maps, handbooks, guide books and journal can be reference sources.
The question was in my mind, why we use reference sources? Our lecturer came to this point and cleared it to me. we use because it is the best place to start our research . They provide good instruction about the topic, provide brief and factual information, define unfamiliar terms and identify additional relevant sources.
1. Encyclopedia
                        An encyclopedia is a book that contains concise, factual information on topics or concepts. It also containing general information about topics and arranged alphabetically order. It can be two type, general or specific encyclopedia. General encyclopedia arranged articles by topics. Specific encyclopedia is available for academic discipline. They provide more in depth and technical information than general encyclopedia.

2. Dictionaries
                      Dictionary is also a reference source that provides information about words. Definition, spelling, pronunciation, usage, synonyms, abbreviation and grammatical information provided by it. it can also in the form of general, historical, etymological, subject directory, period or scholarly specialized, subject and others dictionaries provide various information about different words.
There are some types of dictionaries known by different names,

1. Glossary
2. Lexicon
3. Thesaurus
4. Vocabulary

3. Geographical sources
                       A biographical source is a directory of prominent person, usually arranged alphabetically, by surnames, with biographical identification that range from brief outline to extend narrative.
4. Geographical sources
                                    It is another form of information source that allows people to gain information about places. Maps, Gazetteers, Atlases, Globes, Travel guides and Global positioning system are included in geographical sources. After that, she illustrate the. A map is a flat drawing that describes a place or part of the world. A globe is a three dimensional model of earth. Atlases contain collections of maps. They provide information on geographical or political changes. Gazetteers referred as geographical dictionaries and provide descriptions of places.
5. Year books
                      Our lecturer also demonstrates about year books that is a record of annual development in a geographical area in a subject discipline or in an organization.
6. Periodical Publication
                          It refers to a material that is published at regular basis. Its publication comes out regularly or occasionally. For example, Journals, Magazines and newspapers.
At last we learnt about the format of information source that include microfilm, audiovisual media and bibliographical database. A bibliographical database is a bibliographical record, an organized collection of references including journal and newspaper article, reports and government and legal publication.

Where we can find information sources?
They can be found in the form of
1. Archives
2. Library
3. Internet 

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