Where are we?
Assignments
 Library map
 E-mail assignment
 Biography
 Defining the Research Question (Tutorial 1)
 Organization Paragraph
 Netiquette Quiz
 Read E-mail website(s)
 Any Questions?
Organization paragraph
 Similarities
 How is information organized?
What it is and Making sense of it
What is information
 Your thoughts?
Information
 Written knowledge
 Books, magazines, newspapers & internet
 What else? Anything else?
Information
 Stone tablet
 Comic book
 Oral folktale passed through generations
 Idea communicated electronically
 via television or computer
Information
 Definition according to American Library Association
(information experts)
 “All ideas, facts, imaginative works of the mind
which have been communicated, recorded,
published and or distributed formally or informally
in any format”
Organization
 Arrangement of items into a system
 Establishes rules or reasons for arranging items in a
consistent way
 Who sets the rules and what are they?
The need to organize
 Value of information is enhanced if it can be used
more than once, heard by more than one person
viewed by more than one viewer, or
communicated to more than one reciever
 If info can’t be “re-used” or has no access, may as well
be no information at all
 Misinformation vs. wrong information
 (Is there a difference?)
Organization
 Arrange and organize into a system so that
arrangement makes the parts interdependent.
 Methods of organization?
 Descending (even this is a method)
 As collection grows you need more sophisticated level
of organization
 Organization by content vs. format
 (What is content? What is format?)
 Using music as an example.
Methods of organization
 Content
 What its about
 Format
 medium used: audio, visual, audio-visual, digital

Audio (Format)
 Sub formats
 Cds, lp’s, cassettes…..
 Microfilm, paper, color, black and white, slides, videos,
dvd’s, film, vhs, floppy or
Content & organization of Information
 Content
 Subject of the information in an item
 Characteristic of information in an item

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Factual or analytical
Subjective or objective
Primary or secondary
Libraries
 Organize by subject
 Different systems
 Dewey Decimal System
 Library of Congress Classification System (LC)
 NOTE: classification system allows the assignment of
only one subject number to each item in the system.
Web organization
 There is no one system that organizes the information
on the web
 Billions of web pages housed on servers
 There are many organization systems in place on many
web sites
 Web as a whole is not organized
Info characteristics & Determining your info
need
 Determining your information need
 Narrrowing your topic
 Broadening your topic
 Synonyms
 Related terms
 Short presentation or in-depth
Determining your need
 One source or many?
 Overview or in-depth
 Current or historical (time)
 Type of Source
 Scholarly vs. popular
 Primary, Secondary or Tertiary
Characteristics
 Primary information
 Not published anywhere else, or put into context or
interpreted or translated by anyone else

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Professor’s lecture notes
Account of crossing into the United States by your parent
First report of a scientific study by your chemistry group
Handwritten manuscript – poem by Jim Morrison
Blog published on WWW (you)
Characteristics
 Secondary Information
 Removed in some way from original source and
repackaged. A restatement, examination,or
interpretation of information from one or more primary
sources

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Borrowed notes from a friend from class missed
Television documentary on lobotomies
Article critiques a Frida Kahlo painting
Article critiques Tupac’s lyrics to “Dear Mama”
Characteristics
 Tertiary Information
 A source that leads you to secondary information

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Bibliography on computer games
Bibliography on fishing
Indices or indexes
Determing your need
 Format
 Slides, audio sources, power point other visuals
 Factual or analytical
 Viewpoint?
Determing your need
 Factual information provides no explanation of its
statements
 Analytical information requires searching periodical
articles and books
 Usually takes more than one source
Characteristics continued
 Objective information
 Helps you choose a single aspect of a topic
 Subjective information
 Helps when you need to evaluate
Formats
 Books
 Print
 Electronic
Formats
 Periodicals
 Print

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Bound
Unbound
 Electronic
 Microform

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Microfilm
microfiche