TYPES OF INFORMATION
SOURCES
• Published works
• Unpublished works

Published works
• Government publications
• Journals
• Newspapers
• Monographs and textbooks
• Reference works
• Audio Visual
• Electronic media

Government publications
Official publication issued by a government publishing facility
Examples:
• Statutes
• Acts
• Government gazette
• Debates of parliament (Hansard)

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•
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A journal is a periodical, which generally contains material relating to research
•
Appears at regular intervals – weekly, monthly, quarterly
•
Content varies and can include editorials, articles, book reviews, etc
•
They do not necessarily have the word
“journal” in the title, e.g.
South african medical journal
New scientist

• Newspapers: issued either daily, weekly or monthly
• Contain news, opinions, advertisements and other subjects related to current affairs
• South African newspaper articles indexed by SAMedia and available for searching under Databases

Monographs
Publications that deal comprehensively with a specific subject ( a monograph is a book that include many articles written by many authors about one subject)

• Information sources that contain audio,or video materials ,or motion pictures.

Electronic Media
Information that is electronically available
• CD Rom programs (eg. Heart sounds & murmurs, Procedural skills …)
• eBooks (Textbook of pediatrics, The 5-minute consult, Harrison ’s textbook of internal medicine …)
• eJournals (Lancet, British medical journal)

Unpublished works
• Human sources
• Dissertations / Theses
• Reports
• Grey literature
• Information on the Internet
• Email

Human(personal) sources
• Lecturers
• Colleagues
• Scientists
• And others

Dissertations / Theses
• Research work prepared as part of an academic course for a higher degree
• Copy usually made available in library of university

Research / Progress reports
Written description of a completed research project or an interim progress report

Grey literature
Information that is not available through the normal book selling channels ,such papers, reports, technical notes or other documents produced and published by governmental agencies, academic institutions and other groups that are not distributed or indexed by commercial publishers. Many of these documents are difficult to locate and obtain.

*Dictionary
*Thesaurus
*Encyclopedia
*Atlas
*Biography
*Bibliography
*Almanac
*Address book
*Year book

We use a dictionary to look up words.
You will find the meaning of words in a dictionary.
For example, when you do not know the meaning of a word in a story. You may use a dictionary to look up the meaning of the word.

Why do we use encyclopedias?
An encyclopedia is used when someone wants to find information about a person, place, or thing.
You may want to find out information about
George Washington. You can learn about him from reading information in an encyclopedia.

An atlas contains maps .
If you want to find a specific place, street, road, city, or state.
Many people use an atlas when they are going on vacation or traveling to another place

In a thesaurus, you will find synonyms for words .
First, you look up the word in the thesaurus. Next to the word you will find a list of words that mean the same things as the word you looked up.
Like wonderful –great, magnificent, excellent, terrific, cool, and fantastic
Also in a thesaurus you will find an antonym for the word. Like horrible or awful would be an antonym for wonderful.

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A book to which you can refer for authoritative facts that happened the past year (such as
Olympics games statistics, popular events , etc.)

• A book that records and highlights the past year events and news in a certain subject field

• An account of someone's life written by the person himself ,or by someone else .

a systematic list or enumeration of written work s by a specific author or on a given subject , or that share one or more common characteristics ( language , form, period, place of publication , etc.). When a bibliography is about a person, the subject is the bibliographee . A bibliography may be comprehensive or selective . Long bibliographies may be published serial ly or in book form.

• A book used for storing entries called contacts .
Each contact entry usually consists of a few standard fields (for example: first name, last name, company name, address , telephone number, e-mail address, fax number, mobile phone number).

For the next slides I will describe a situation. You must decide what type of reference material would be used in this situation.
Do you know what reference material to use?

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My teacher has assigned a report on the country of Mexico. I need to find information on when the country began and who lived there in ancient times.
Where would I find this type of information?

Answer
Encyclopedia
Great Job!!!

My family is planning a vacation to Florida.
We are going to Universal Studios. I am so excited! My father is trying to decide what interstate he needs to take. Or how to get their from Tennessee?
What reference material should he use to find this information?

Answer

Jimmy is working on writing a sentence with each of his spelling words. He comes to a word he does not know.
How can he find the definition of the word?
What reference material should he use to find this information?

Answer

I am writing a story about my experience at the
Spelling Bee. I want to find another word to use instead of saying great. Where can I find a word that means the same as great?
What reference material would I use to find this information?

Answer

Jane is working on a research paper for her third grade class. She is trying to find information about how people in France celebrate Christmas.
First, she must find out where her country is located and some of the major cities.
Where would she find this information ?
What reference material would she use for this report?

Tracy is learning new vocabulary that goes along with her reading story for this week.
Her teacher has explained the word to the class. Tracy would like to find another word that means the same as the vocabulary word she is working on.
Where can she find this information? What reference material should Tracy use to find a synonym for this word?

Answer
Thesaurus
Excellent Job !!!!!

Ahmed is preparing a paper research on the Egyptian journalism, what should he do first, and next?
Where can he find the needed information?

Where can you find information on Napoleon
Bonaparte?

If you need to know the recent topics on mass communication
Technology, where can you find it?

If you need to know the recent topics on mass communication
Technology, where can you find it?

E-Reference Materials
Reference materials like encyclopedias, dictionaries, atlases, and thesaurus help us find information.
It would be hard to find the information we need without these materials.
The internet has all of these reference materials . So, if you don’t have them at your home you will be able to find them on the computer.

• English Arabic dictionary
• http://www.ectaco.co.uk/English-Arabic-
Dictionary/
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• The Encyclopedia :
• : سوماق
•

سوماق
Dictionary for
سوماق
سوماق

What terms can you use in your search?!!