Information Literacy
Step 5: Combine
Combine
• After you’ve evaluated the information
you’ve found, how can you combine it
with existing information?
Learning outcomes
This unit aims to support you to develop
skills associated with the Combine step of
the information literacy cycle. It will
enable you to:
• Summarise key points of the information you’ve
found
• Use brainstorming and mindmapping to organise
ideas and topics
• Understand how the tagging tool works in SSKS
• Understand copyright and plagiarism
Combining, organizing & storing the information you’ve found
• To help organise and summarise the
information you’ve found in your search,
it can be useful to reflect on your
information need, what you’ve found out
and from what sources.
• Summarising or listing the key points
helps you consolidate what you’ve
learned and will help you identify any
gaps that might need more investigation.
Combining new and existing information
• think about what you’ve found: was it new
to you? Did it back up or contradict
something you already knew?
• creating a new folder on your computer and
storing all the information you’re found
• print off materials you’ve found and file
them in a binder or filing cabinet.
• summarise the information you’ve found in
the course of your search by highlighting the
key points
Summaries
• Summaries should be concise, logical and
written in clear language (see unit 6 (Share)
for more on this).
• Summaries can be emailed, posted to your
organisation’s intranet or document sharing
system if there is one.
• Remember, it is ok to share a summary of
what you’ve found and cite the sources but
not always to copy and share the original
article. It depends on the copyright
restrictions on the original document.
Brainstorming & Mind-mapping
• Brainstorming help to get all your ideas
onto the page
• Mind maps help you make links between
the pieces of information you’ve
gathered and begin to organise it. Mind
maps are a graphic way of seeing how
ideas and topics can be linked.
Example mind map: truancy
Scenario 1
Befriending schemes
young people
Elderly people
mental health
problems
outcomes
Social isolation
mentoring
empowerment services
users
Scenario 1: Mindmap
Activity 1
• Organise these terms into a mind map:
Learning disabilities
schools
Legislation
stress
Autism
children
resilience
Down syndrome
parents siblings
coping
child development
Additional Support for Learning Act
SSKS tagging tool
• SSKS has a handy tagging tool to help you
group and combine resources you find
useful.
• Insert image of search result
Adding tags to SSKS resources
•
Add Tags lets you add keywords to a resource and will store them in your own
personal space so you can access them again without searching next time you log
in.
•
Your personal space is part of an area linked to SSKS called My Community Space
that has several useful tools to support communities and sharing.
•
You can view other people’s tags or just your own.
•
The SSKS tagging tool can also be used to tag any resource on the open Internet
too, not just SSKS resources. You can downloaded the tagging tool to your browser
(e.g. Internet Explorer or Firefox) to tag anything you find useful on the Internet
and save them in your SSKS personal space.
•
For more on My Community Space and the tools available including instructions on
how to download the tagging tool go to www.mcs.scot.nhs.uk/
Free online tools for combining and organising information
• Boxnet (www.box.net/) is a free web service that
allows you to upload and store your resources.
• Delicious (http://delicious.com/) is another free web
service that allows you to tag and manage your web
favourites.
• Both Boxnet and Delicious also allow you to share your
resources with others. We’ll discuss sharing further unit
6 (Share) of this training pack.
COPYRIGHT, CITATIONS & REFERENCE
Copyright
•
All original work – music, journal articles, essays, photographs, user guides, PowerPoint
presentations – has a creator, or author and that person or organisation automatically owns the
copyright of that work.
•
Copyright gives authors certain rights to control the use of their creations, e.g. making copies &
issuing or communicating copies to the public.
•
Copyright exists to prevent others from making a profit at the expense of the author.
•
Often a copyrighted piece of work can only be used with permission from the copyright holder.
•
There are some exceptions known as ‘fair dealing’ that allow you to use part of a copyrighted
work for your own non-commercial research or study as long as you acknowledge the source (i.e.
the journal article you’ve used).
•
Acknowledging the sources you use in your work will ensure you avoid plagiarism.
•
Plagiarism - when you pass off someone else’s work (their words and findings) as your own.
Citations & references
• Citations and references show that you know
how to consult other people’s work and
combine their findings with your own.
• They also provide anyone reading your report
with the information they need to find the
sources you’ve used.
• Citations and references both give details of
your sources but in different ways.
Citations are in-text acknowledgements
•
Substance misuse (particularly alcohol) contributes significantly to the
number of children and families on social work caseloads (Forrester &
Harwin, 2004).
•
“…children formulate important opinions about their social, political and
cultural contexts that are not simply reflective of their parents’ ideas…..if
children had greater access to a public voice through vehicles such as
research, they would be able to contribute to the social structures that
concern them” (Irwin & Johnson, 2000, p821).
•
The second example includes a direct quote and so includes a page
number in the citation.
Examples taken from Looking Beyond Risk: Parental Substance Misuse Scoping
Study. Scottish Executive (2006).
References
An alphabetical list of all sources you’ve used
•
Citations appear in the text of your report and give the reader a quick
indication of the author(s) and date of the source you’re referring to.
•
References give a full description of the source e.g. authors, date of
publication, source of publication and publisher.
•
A reference list generally appears at the end of reports and articles.
Example reference list
•
Bancroft A., Wilson S., Cunningham-Burley S., Backett-Milburn, K. &
Masters, H. (2004). Parental drug and alcohol misuse: Resilience and
transition among young people. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
•
Banwell, C., Denton, B. & Bammer, G. (2002). Programmes for the
children of illicit drug-using parents: issues and dilemmas. Drug and
Alcohol Review 21(4); 381-386.
•
Barber, J.G. & Crisp, B.R. (1995). The ‘pressures to change’ approach to
working with the partners of heavy drinkers. Addiction 90; 269-276.
•
Barnard, M. (2005). Drugs in the family: the impact on parents and
siblings. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
•
Barnard, M. (2003). Between a rock and a hard place: the role of relatives
in protecting children from the effects of parental drug problems. Child
and Family Social Work 8; 291-299.
Different types of references
• References contain different information depending on
the type of resource they describe.
• For example, you can see that the below reference
describes a journal article and gives information about:
– The authors (Banwell, C., Denton, B. & Bammer, G.), the year
of publication (2002), the article title (Programmes for the
children of illicit drug-using parents: issues and dilemmas), the
journal title (Drug and Alcohol Review), the edition of the
journal (21) and the part (4) as well as the page numbers of the
article (381-386).
• The below reference isn’t a journal article but a report
produced by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. In this
case the reference includes:
– The author (Barnard, M.), the year of publication
(2005), the report title (Drugs in the family: the
impact on parents and siblings), place of publication
(York) and the publisher (Joseph Rowntree
Foundation).
Scenerios
Is there a risk copyright has been infringed?
You find an article that you think your team
would be interested in. You print off copies for
your team and hand them round.
Yes – you’re not using the article for your own
personal research or study but are making
multiple copies for your team.
You email your colleagues with a link to a useful
good practice guide.
No – you’re only sending a link rather than the
full text of the resource
You’re putting together some PowerPoint slides
for a presentation and include some images and
video clips from a film.
Yes – unless you’ve got permission or the
copyright statement says you can freely use
these images and video, you should avoid using
them in your slides.
You write a summary of a range of articles
you’ve read and email this round your team.
You include citations in the text and a reference
list at the end.
No – you’re free to summarise resources in your
own words and you’ve acknowledged the
You find a relevant e-book and upload this to
your organisation’s intranet.
Yes – sharing this e-book widely means that
sources used.
you’re not using it for your own personal study.
Activity 2
1. A citation is…
a) an alphabetical list of all sources used that
appears at the end of a document.
b) an acknowledgement of a source that
appears in the text of a document.
c) a date that shows when a document was
written.
3. Copyright…
a) means you can’t copy any part of a
document.
b) gives authors certain rights to control the
use of their creations, including making
copies and issuing or communicating copies
to the public.
c) means you can make copies of a document
and distribute to your colleagues.
2. References are…
a) an alphabetical list of all sources used that
appears at the end of a document.
b) an acknowledgement of a source that
appears in the text of a document.
c) a date that shows when a document was
written.
4. Plagiarism…
a) gives authors certain rights to control the use
of their creations, including making copies
and issuing or communicating copies to the
public.
b) is when you make multiple copies of a
document.
c) is when you pass off someone else’s work as
your own.
References
• Forester, D. & Harwin, J. (2004). Social work and parental
substance misuse. In Phillips, R. (Ed), Children exposed to parental
substance misuse: Implications for family placement. London:
BAAF; 115-131.
• Irwin, L.G. & Johnson, J. (2005). Interviewing Young Children:
Explicating Our Practices and Dilemmas. Qualitative Health
Research 15(6); 821-831.
• Templeton, L., Zohhadi, S., Galvani, S. & Velleman, R. (2006).
Looking Beyond Risk: Parental Substance Misuse Scoping Study.
Scottish Executive.
Further reading
•
Information Skills for Researchers: Copyright:
http://www.open.ac.uk/infoskillsresearchers/copyright.htm
•
Avoiding Plagiarism:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/589/
01/
•
Synthesis of Information:
http://www.big6.com/2007/09/30/big6-stage-5synthesis-of-information/
•
Paraphrase: Write it in Your Own Words:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/owl/resource/619/
01/
•
Wikipedia: Mind Maps:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_map
•
•
Wikipedia: Brainstorming:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming
Finding information in health and lifestyle:
organizing your information:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.
php?id=189700
•
Finding information in health and lifestyle:
copyright:
http://openlearn.open.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.
php?id=189710
•
The Publishers Association Guidelines 2008:
http://www.publishers.org.uk/en/home/copyright
/copyright_guidelines/
•
Citing Your Sources:
http://www.lib.berkeley.edu/instruct/guides/citat
ions.html
Copyright & Credits
(c) 2009 Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services except
where indicated otherwise.
This work is based on and derived from Better informed for better health and
better care. NHS Education Scotland, 2009
(http://www.infoliteracy.scot.nhs.uk/information-literacy-framework.aspx).
CC-BY-NC. Except where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.5 UK : Scotland License. To
view a copy of this licence, visit
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/scotland/.
This means that, unless indicated otherwise, you may freely copy and adapt
this work provided you acknowledge IRISS as the source. Specifically:
* The Information Literacy Cycle diagram may be copied but may not be
modified without permission from NHS Education Scotland [contact: Eilean.Craig@nes.scot.nhs.uk]
* The article reproduced with the permission of the Press Association may
not be included in any derivative work.