Ch1: Information and Information Seeking

Ch1. Information and Information Seeking

What is Information?
Information is anything that can be perceived. Information is always about something. That may a truth or lies. Information is simply the medium provoke a human response. This can include written communications, spoken communications, photographs, art, and music, nearly anything that is perceivable.

1. Information as a message:

2.

3. 4.

5.

Information is the state of a system of interest. Message is the information materialized. Information is a quality of a message from a sender to one or more receivers. There should be a definite sender and at least one receiver. Information is a message received and understood. Information as a pattern: Information is any represented pattern. This view assumes neither accuracy nor directly communicating parties, but instead assumes a separation between an object and its representation. Example: The electro-magnetic patterns in a computer network Information as sensory input: Information can also be viewed as a type of input to an organism or designed device. Example: Food, Music, Painting Information as records: Records are information produced consciously or as by-products of business activities or transactions and retained because of their value. The international standard on records management, ISO 15489, defines records as "information created, received, and maintained as evidence and information by an organization or person, in pursuance of legal obligations or in the transaction of business". The International Committee on Archives (ICA) Committee on electronic records defined a record as, "a specific piece of recorded information generated, collected or received in the initiation, conduct or completion of an activity and that comprises sufficient content, context and structure to provide proof or evidence of that activity". R.A. Fishers Definition: Information is thought of as the amount of information that a message carries about an unobservable parameter. It can be computed from knowledge of the likelihood function defining the system. Example: Application of statistics to estimation theory

What is Information Seeking? Information seeking involves the search, retrieval, recognition, and application of meaningful content. This search may be explicit or implicit, the retrieval may be the result of specific strategies or chance, the resulting information may be embraced or rejected, the entire experience may be carried through to a logical conclusion or aborted in midstream, and there may be a million other potential results. Information seeking is a problem-solving task involving many steps and requiring various tools. How Is Information Organized? Traditionally, information was contained in books, periodicals, newspapers, and other types of recorded media. It was accessible through a library's catalog and with the assistance of indexes, in the case of periodical and newspaper articles. Now online
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Ch1: Information and Information Seeking catalogs, online indexing, online abstracting systems have developed so as to organize the information to retrieve as and when required. Even computers can help us to organize information and can even automate indexing and cataloging. All the information is organized according to their priority and importance.
Ways to represent documents to support Information seeking Location Filing Retrieval Security Disaster Recovery Archiving Distribution Workflow Creation Authentication The documents should be located in proper place which will help the seekers for retrieval. Onscreen navigation may be used comparably. Easy filing methods should be used to organize or index the documents. The documents should be easily retrievable for both browsing through the documents and searching for specific information. Documents should be protected and prevented from unauthorized personnel from reading, modifying or destroying. Appropriate recovery methods should be used to recover the documents in case of destruction from fires, floods or natural disasters. Documents should be preserved for future readability. They should be distributed correctly to the people those who need it. Easy workflow rules should be followed, if the documents need to pass from one person to another. Documents should be created in apt way for collaboration and the logistic version control and authoring wherever it is needed. The authentication to access the documents should be created in accordance with the requirements.

Developments in Electronic environment Information seeking is a process in which humans engage to purposefully change their state of knowledge. The process is inherently interactive as information seekers direct attention, accept and adapt to stimuli, reflect on progress, and evaluate the efficacy of continuation. Information seeking is thus a cybernetic process in which knowledge state is changed through inputs, purposive outputs, and feedback. Information seeking is a strictly human process that requires adaptive and reflective control over the afferent and efferent actions of the information seeker. Information seeking in electronic environment as an interaction between people and information should connect informational and computational resources to the user based on user characteristics, user query, and environment at different interaction progresses and conceptual levels. Information Searching Tools Types of Search: Passive search: Acquisition of information that happens to be relevant to the individual Active search: An individual actively seeks out information; Ongoing search: Where active searching has already established with the basic framework of ideas, continuing search is carried out to update or expand one's framework. Modes of Seeking:

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Ch1: Information and Information Seeking Undirected Viewing: The individual is exposed to information with no specific informational need in mind. The overall purpose is to scan broadly. Many and varied sources of information are used, and large amounts of information are screened. The granularity of information is coarse, but large chunks of information are quickly dropped from attention. The goal of broad scanning implies the use of a large number of different sources and different types of sources. Conditioned Viewing: The individual directs viewing to information about selected topics or to certain types of information. The overall purpose is to evaluate the significance of the information encountered in order to assess the general nature of the impact on the organization. The individual has isolated a number of areas of potential concern from undirected viewing, and is now sensitized to assess the significance of developments in those areas. Informal Search: The individual actively looks for information to deepen the knowledge and understanding of a specific issue. It is informal in that it involves a relatively limited and unstructured effort. The overall purpose is to gather information to elaborate an issue so as to determine the need for action by the organization. Formal Search: The individual makes a planned effort to obtain specific information or types of information about a particular issue. Search is formal because it is structured according to some pre-established procedure or methodology. The granularity of information is fine, as search is relatively focused to find detailed information. The overall purpose is to systematically retrieve information relevant to an issue in order to provide a basis for developing a decision or course of action. The four modes of seeking are summarized and compared Modes of Seeking Seeking Modes Undirected Viewing Information Need Information Seeking Information Use "Browsing" Serendipitous discovery

"Sweeping" General areas of Scan broadly a diversity of interest; specific sources, taking advantage of need to be revealed what's easily accessible

Conditioned Viewing

"Discriminating" "Learning" Able to recognize Browse in pre-selected Increase knowledge topics of interest sources on pre-specified topics about topics of of interest interest Able to formulate simple queries Able to specify targets in detail "Satisfying" "Selecting" Search is focused on area or Increase knowledge topic, but a good-enough on area within narrow search is satisfactory boundaries "Optimizing" Systematic gathering of information about an entity, following some method or "Retrieving" Formal use of information for decision-, policyPage 3 of

Informal Search Formal Search

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Ch1: Information and Information Seeking procedure Ways of Searching:

(1) Catalog Search (2) Index Search (3) Content Search (4) Online Search (5) Abstract Search

making

Information seeking Strategies: Information seeking strategies may also includes consulting our own long-term memory; asking friends, colleagues or experts; consulting personal collections of books, periodicals and files; conducting empirical investigations; and applying formal systems. Formal systems include: libraries, research firms, government agencies, electronic networks, and the growing collection of information services.
Information & Knowledge: Information Static Independent of the individual Explicit Digital Easy to Duplicate Easy to broadcast No intrinsic meaning Knowledge Dynamic Dependent on individuals Tacit Analogue Must be re-created Face-to-face mainly Meaning has to be personally assigned

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