1.

0 OVERVIEW OF INFORMATION
DEFINITIONS OF TERMS
INFORMATION
Generally knowledge derived from data.
Information can consist of data, images, text,
documents and sound.
According to Concise Oxford Dictionary,
information is informing, telling things, told,
knowledge and news.
INFORMATION
• Information derives its meaning from the word
inform that is to tell or give news.
• Information is defined as organized or structured
data, which has been processed in such a way
that the information has relevance for a specific
purpose or context, and is therefore meaningful,
valuable, useful and relevant.
• Information is something that can lead to
knowledge regardless and medium of its
convincement to one and other person.
INFORMATION
Characteristics of information

• Information often described as a commodity, which can

be sold, exchanged, accumulated and stored, patented
and owned and not depleted when it used.

• Considered to be personal, organizational and national

resource of great value.

• It will be most valuable when it is quickly and easily

available and effectively organized.
IMPORTANCE OF INFORMATION AND
KNOWLEDGE
By acquiring and maintaining information, a person be
able to:

• Be more alert of the surroundings

• Be ever more ready to face new challenges

• Understand the past better in order to chart the future

• Have deeper understanding of present situations

IMPORTANCE OF INFORMATION AND
KNOWLEDGE
• Be more effective in making decisions

• Help generate variations of new and fresh ideas

• Have more intellectual choices to choose from

• Creatively solve difficult problems in a much

shorter time
DATA
• Facts and figures recorded onto a medium as a
result of observations, survey or research and can
be used to find answers or interpret situations

• Data is collected and analyzed to create

information suitable for making decisions, while
knowledge is derived from extensive amounts of
experience dealing with information on a subject.
DATA
• Information in raw or unorganized form (such
as alphabets, numbers, or symbols) that refer
to, or represent, conditions, ideas, or objects.

• Representation of information in a formal

manner, suitable for communication,
interpretation and processing.
DATA
• Facts and figures that has been organized as a result of
observations, surveys or research. (Mary Gosling)

• Individual facts, statistics, or a single piece of

information.

• Facts or information used usually to calculate, analyze, or

plan something.

• A gathered body of facts.

Characteristics of data
• Data becomes information by interpretation.
• Data is the tangible part of information.
• Data is durable and can be used for a long
period of time.
• It can be from anything that we see, hear or
read in the form of text, sound or vision
KNOWLEDGE
• Information that is found to be relevant, that
strikes the mind, can be interpreted, stored on a
medium or in the mind, and used for a purpose.

• Knowledge is the result of manipulating and

exploiting the available data, organizing and
restructuring all the information from the data
and transforms it into something useful.
DEFINITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

• Knowledge is data which a person recognizes as relevant and is

thought about, interpreted, stored (in one‘s memory or in a variety
of formats) or used for a purpose. (Mary Gosling)

• Knowledge is something that is believed, that is true and that is

reliable. (Steve Denning)

• Knowledge is information that changes something or somebody—

either by becoming grounds for actions, or by making an individual
(or an institution) capable of different or more effective action.
(Peter F. Drucker)
DEFINITIONS OF KNOWLEDGE

• Knowledge is the perception of the agreement or

disagreement of two ideas. (John Locke)

• Knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience,

contextual information, values and expert insight
that provides a framework for evaluating and
incorporating new experiences and information.
(Davenport and Prusak, 1998)
INFORMATION SKILLS
The ability to:
DEFINE – to identify what info is needed
LOCATE – to search for info at its correct location
ORGANIZE – to arrange the right info at the right
place
SELECT – to chose the best info
PRESENT – to best way to inform audience
EVALUATE – to learn from mistakes & make things
better
A STRATEGY FOR USING LITERACY SKILLS

• Find any library and explore what are the services and
information provided. Identify types of information offered and
tools used in locating and preserving information.

• Explore Internet and try to study what kind of information that

you can access and the tools used in locating and searching
information.

• Use the World Wide Web (WWW) when searching information

through Internet. On the WWW you be able to get the web
pages that offered you the information needed.
INFORMATION LITERACY
• Information literacy can be defined as the ability to
identify, locate, evaluate and select information in all
formats in order to use it.

• To be information literate, individual must be able to

use the tools and services provided by the
information agencies such as libraries, information
center and also must be capable to use the latest
information technology such Internet
communication and on-line database.
INFORMATION LITERACY

Three major skills needed to be information

literate:

• Able to find information in variety formats.

• Able to find information in variety of sources.

• Able to find information within the sources

INFORMATION LITERACY
A Strategy of using information literacy skills
• Information often described as a commodity, which can
be sold, exchanged, accumulated and stored, patented
and owned and not depleted when it used.
 
• Considered to be personal, organizational and national
resource of great value.

• It will be most valuable when it is quickly and easily

available and effectively organized.
INFORMATION LITERACY
Characteristics of information literate person:
• Identify and determine the needs of information.
• Locate and retrieve sources of information.
• Understand the structure of information.
• Use indexes and other search tools effectively
and efficiently to find specific resources.
• Evaluate information and its sources
• Understand different types of sources and
formats, and how to use them.
INFORMATION LITERACY
IMPACT OF INFORMATION LITERACY
• Create opportunities for deep, meaningful learning throughout
the students undergraduate education.
• Enable the students to learn the value of information so they
know how they can use the information effectively in
research ,find solutions, identify practice weaknesses, develop
solutions and improve information literate skills.Incorporated
selected information into their knowledge base
• Use information effectively to learn, create new knowledge,
solve problems and make decisions
• Understand economic, legal, social, political and cultural issues
in the use of information
INFORMATION LITERACY
Advantages of Information Literacy
• Students learn to find, evaluate and synthesize
information thus developing critical thinking skills which
hopefully leads better research.
• Better research should lead to more success in studies
thus increasing the retention rates of students.
• The skills they develop are transferable to their eventual
workplace making the students more marketable
• Determine the extent of information needed
INFORMATION LITERACY
Advantages of Information Literacy
• Access the needed information and its sources
critically
• Incorporate selected information into one's
knowledge base
• Understand the economic, legal, and social issues
surrounding the use of information, and access
and use the information ethically and legally.
INFORMATION LITERACY
Disadvantages of Information Literacy
• Many paper information sources lies in the difficulty of
updating them
• The difficulty of indexing the contents of any book or
periodical thoroughly
• Lack of effective information retrieval skills and those
students may avoid using these materials because they
do not have the skills necessary to use them.
• The amount and complexity of information with which
students have to deal is growing by leaps and bounds.
ISSUES IN INFORMATION
Information Overload
Information overload is a situation where there is too much
information available and there is an increasing difficulty to
get the exact information needed at a certain period of time.

Information overload refers to the difficulty a person can

have understanding an issue and making decisions that can
be caused by the presence of too much information.

Information overload occurs when the amount of input to a

system exceeds its processing capacity.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Consequences of information overload

• difficult to determine the relevant information
from the irrelevant.
• does not understand the available information.
• feel amazed by the amount of information
available
• does not know the existence of certain
information
• does not know where to find the information and
access the information.
INFORMATION OVERLOAD

Causes
• The widespread access to the Web
• The ease of sending e-mail messages to large numbers of
people
• As information can be duplicated for free, there is no variable
cost in producing more copies – people send reports and
information to people who may need to know, rather than
definitely need to know.
• Poorly created information sources (especially online), which:
– are not simplified or filtered to make them shorter
– are not written clearly, so people have to spend more time
understanding them
– contain factual errors or inconsistencies – requiring further research
INFORMATION OVERLOAD
Solutions
• Spending less time on gaining information that is nice to know and
more time on things that we need to know now.
• Focusing on quality of information, rather than quantity. A short
concise e-mail is more valuable than a long e-mail.
• Learning how to create better information (this is what
Infogineering is about). Be direct in what you ask people, so that
they can provide short precise answers.
• Single-tasking, and keeping the mind focused on one issue at a
time.
• Spending parts of the day disconnected from interruptions (e.g.
switch off e-mail, telephones, Web, etc.) so you can fully
concentrate for a significant period of time on one thing.
FORMAT OF INFORMATION
• Printed
• Electronics
• Audio-visual
• Microform
FORMAT OF INFORMATION
Printed
The information is in the printed form and usually
uses paper such as books, journals, pamphlets
seminar papers, etc…

Electronic
Electronic formats use a computer to deliver
information such as OPAC and Internet.
FORMAT OF INFORMATION
Audiovisual (AV)
AV formats require to watch and listen such as
cassettes, slides, films, etc…

Microform
Microform reduces an image and put it on a
plastic to read in a machine such as microfilm,
microfiche and micro cartridge.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
People
Organizations
Information System
Literature
Primary
Secondary
Tertiary
 
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
People
People or individuals are an important source of
information and they become an information
resource when the information is not available
in written form and when information is needed
urgently.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Organization
Information that derives from the organization such
as policy, directives, objectives and minutes of
meeting.
The information in organization can be gain into
various categories such as:
• Commercial organizations
• Educational institutions
• Official organizations
• Society and professionals organizations
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Information systems
Computer based service that provides
information in response to specific
request from users and operated by the
organization for their own benefit such
as network system, optical disk, CD-
ROM, CD-NET, Internet and etc.  
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Literature
There are 3 main categories of sources:

Primary
The first level which the information is generated and the
sources are original information, which has not been
filtered through interpretation, condensation or
evaluation. It refers to a person who provides information
or an object such as letters, computer programs, maps,
article, thesis or dissertations, reports and interviews.
SOURCES OF INFORMATION
Secondary
Information about primary or original information, which
has been modified, selected, rearranged for a specific
purpose or audience such as encyclopedias, dictionaries,
directories, yearbook, almanacs and etc.
Tertiary
Used to track existing information. Provides information
that we received as third hand which is anything that you
found from somebody who found it from someone else
like abstract and indexes, bibliography of bibliography, and
directory of directories.
TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE
Tacit Knowledge

• Unwritten, unspoken, and hidden knowledge held by human being, based

on his or her emotions, experiences, insights, intuition, observations and
internalized information.

• Tacit knowledge is experience of a person's consciousness of memory and

is acquired largely through association with other people, and requires
joint or shared activities to be imparted from one to another.

• In other word, knowledge that is not printed or publish and normally

resides in person’s memory.
TYPES OF KNOWLEDGE

Explicit Knowledge
• Articulated knowledge, expressed and recorded as words,
numbers, codes, mathematical and scientific formulae,
and musical notations.

• Explicit knowledge is easy to communicate, store, and

distribute and is the knowledge found in books, on the
web, and other visual and oral means.

• It is recorded information and well published.

 END OF CHAPTER 1
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