WEEK 3 (INFORMATION ORGANIZATION AND RETREIVAL)

Information sources
• Primary sources
• Secondary sources
• Tertiary Sources

Primary sources

Primary sources are original materials. They are from the time period involved and have not been filtered through interpretation.
– Diaries
– Interviews (legal proceedings, personal, telephone, e-mail)

– Letters
– Original Documents (i.e. birth certificate or a trial transcript)
– Patents
– Photographs
– Proceedings of Meetings, Conferences and Symposia.
– Survey Research (such as market surveys and public opinion polls)
– Works of Literature

Secondary Sources
Secondary sources are accounts written after the fact with
the benefit of hindsight. They are interpretations and
evaluations of primary sources. Secondary sources are not
evidence, but rather commentary on and discussion of
evidence.
– Biographies
– Commentaries
– Dissertations
– Indexes, Abstracts, Bibliographies (used to locate primary & secondary sources)
– Journal Articles
– Monographs

Tertiary Sources
Tertiary sources consist of information which is a distillation and collection of primary and secondary sources.
• Almanacs 

• Encyclopedias
• Fact books

 Learning Objects
• Any entity, digital or non-digital, that may be used for learning, education or training

Why Organize Information?
• The main reason
– So that you can find things more effectively

• Effective retrieval must be based on some sort of organization applied to information resources

• Historically there have been many institutions  and tools devoted to information organization
– Libraries
– Museums
– Archives
– Indexes and catalogs, dictionaries, Phone books,etc.

How to describe information resources or information-bearing objects in ways so that
they may be effectively located by those who need to use them.– Organizing

How to find the appropriate information resources or information-bearing objects for
someone’s (or your own) needs. – Retrieving

Metadata

• Metadata is:
– “data about data” (term usage database systems)

– Information about Information

– Structures and Languages for the Description of Information Resources and their elements (components or features)

– “Metadata is information on the organization of the data, the various data domains, and the relationship between them” (Baeza‐Yates p. 142)

Types of Metadata
• Element names.
• Element description.
• Element representation.
• Element coding.
• Element semantics.
• Element classification.

Today
• Bibliographic Metadata (traditional Library cataloging)
• Other Metadata systems
• Dublin Core

Bibliographic Information
• Describes documents

• (What is a document ?)

• Choice of descriptive elements and content of those elements typically governed by a set of rules:
– AACR II

• Elements coded in standard ways for transmission.
– MARC

Rules for Descriptive Cataloging
• ISBD
• AACR
• AACR II

SUMMARY :

There are 3 types of information sources which are primary sources, secondary sources and tertiary sources. Learning object is can get by a digital object or also non-digital object that used for learning. There are several reasons why we need to organize information.

Metada is is data about data. So it contains many data. Normally we used it in the database. Today, we used bibliographic metadata which is traditional library cataloging, other metada systems and also dublin core.

There are 3 rules for descriptive cataloging which are ISBD, AACR and AACR II. This rules will be explain more on the next lesson.