Chapter 3 Source of Knowledge: Libraries

The difference between Library of Congress Classification System (L.C.) and the Dewey Decimal Classification System....

        The Library of Congress Classification System (L.C.) is used to organize books in many academic and university libraries throughout the United States and world. The LC System organizes material in libraries according to twenty-one branches of knowledge. The 21 categories (labeled A-Z except I,O,W,X and Y) are further divided by adding one or two additional letters and a set of numbers.

       The Dewey Decimal Classification System is used to organized the books in the Library. Under this system, every call number begins with three numbers, followed by various letters and/or number combination. The numbers correspond to subject areas.

                                                                     

       The link below are the useful links of libraries.

1. The Library of Congress Website: http://www.loc.gov/index.html

2. British Library:http://www.bl.uk/

3.Thai National Library: http://www.nlt.go.th/th_index.htm

4.Sripatum University Library: http://librarytest.spu.ac.th/

5. ASEAN Community Website: http://www.asean.org/

    

Chapter 2

Objective and Subjective

Examples of Objective and Subjective
Objective : scientific facts are objective as are mathematical proofs; essentially anything that can be backed up with solid data.

 Subjective : opinions, interpretations, and any type of marketing presentation are all subjective

source: http://www.differencebetween.net/language/difference-between-objective-and-subjective/

The Information Society

The Information Society is a multidisciplinary journal intended to answer questions about the Information Age. It provides a forum for thoughtful commentary and discussion of significant topics in the world of information, such as transborder data flow, regulatory issues, the impact of the information industry, information as a determinant of public and private organizational performance, and information and the sovereignty of the public and private organizational performance, and information and the sovereignty of the public. Its papers analyze information policy issues affecting society. Because of the journal's international perspective, it will have worldwide appeal to scientists and policymakers in government, education, and industry.

source: http://www.tandf.co.uk/journals/titles/01972243.asp


What is Information?
According to Russell Ackoff, a systems theorist and professor of organizational change, the content of the human mind can be classified into five categories:

Data... data is raw. It simply exists and has no significance beyond its existence (in and of itself). It can exist in any form, usable or not. It does not have meaning of itself.

Information... information is data that has been given meaning by way of relational connection.

Knowledge... knowledge is the appropriate collection of information, such that it's intent is to be useful. Knowledge is a deterministic process.

Understanding... understanding is an interpolative and probabilistic process. It is cognitive and analytical. It is the process by which I can take knowledge and synthesize new knowledge from the previously held knowledge. The difference betw een understanding and knowledge is the difference between "learning" and "memorizing".

Wisdom... wisdom is an extrapolative and non-deterministic, non-probabilistic process. It calls upon all the previous levels of consciousness, and specifically upon special types of human programming (moral, ethical codes, etc.).

source: http://www.systems-thinking.org/dikw/dikw.htm

Good and Poor Information

There is a tremendous amount of useful, factual information available online. Unfortunately, it's also very easy to find incorrect or misleading information when searching online.
It can be quite difficult to determine whether the information you find on the internet is good or bad. Lots of incoherent information is posted every day by people simply looking to jump ahead in the search engine rankings.

Have you ever read through an entire article or website, only to realize that you have more questions than you did when you started? You've probably stumbled upon some poor information in your time using the internet. There are different kinds of incorrect information available online; read on to find a description of these different types.

Intentionally Misleading Information - If you've browsed Wikipedia for a fair amount of time you've probably came across a page that was locked. This happens often when celebrities are are involved in scandals or when they pass away. Some of the comments you may encounter are totally inaccurate, while others might be controversial and subject to argument on both sides of the issue.

Wikipedia's administrators lock pages when there are too many edits coming in that present false information. This is especially common for the pages of celebrities with poor reputations, which often have derogatory information posted on them. Visit the page of a controversial celebrity and look at the edit history; you'll almost definitely see some of these edits. This is one of the negatives that come with user contributed sites, and these things must be screened carefully when the open source frameworks permit such easy access by the general public.

Unintentionally False Information - Everywhere you look online, you'll find someone claiming to be an expert and sharing his or her secrets. While they may not be trying to intentionally mislead you, they're often not 100% correct.

Always question the claims of any self-proclaimed experts online. You can double-check the facts behind their statements to be sure that what they're saying is truthful. Most of these people are simply trying to make money, and even though they may not have any malicious intent, the end result still has you believing false information.

Despite all of this, don't be scared to find information online. There's still a huge amount of useful information that can be found on the internet; you just have to do a little extra research sometimes and try to stick to reputable sources. Stick with these sources and more likely than not, you won't be mislead.

source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Poor-and-Good-Information-Available-Online&id=4303157

Chapter 1

Information source

"Source" means the origin of something. An information source is a source of information for somebody, i.e. anything that might inform a person about something or provide knowledge to somebody. Information sources may be observations, people, speeches, documents, pictures, organizations etc. They may be primary sources, secondary sources, tertiary sources and so on.

Primary Sources

Academic research is based on primary sources: original 'material' from the field one is studying, including books, articles and letters written by the people or in the field one is studying, interviews with persons involved in the field, speeches and lectures which they delivered, diaries they kept, etc. Scholars consult primary sources in search of new material and/or insights that have not previously been reported by other scholars, or have been reported differently or perhaps even 'mis-reported' by other scholars.

Secondary Sources
Secondary sources are accounts of events which were created well after the event occurred. Secondary sources are based on primary sources — they are usually studies which analyze, evaluate, interpret, or criticize primary sources. By assessing, repackaging and distributing information, secondary sources make the information more accessible.

Tertiary Sources

In addition to primary and secondary sources, there are also tertiary sources. These are sources that compile or digest other sources. Some reference materials and textbooks are considered tertiary sources when their chief purpose is to list, summarize or simply repackage ideas or other information. Tertiary sources include dictionaries and encyclopedias, Wikipedia and similar user-contributed online 'encyclopedias' and reference material, as well as various digests (including the Reader's Digest and similar) and schoolbooks.

Generally, tertiary sources are not considered to be acceptable material on which to base academic research. However, this depends on the topic being covered and the reason the source is used. If a language scholar is comparing different definitions of terms in a selection of contemporary dictionaries, or describing different shades of meaning of the translation into Finnish of a term from English on the basis of available dictionaries, the use of these dictionaries as sources would not only be entirely appropriate and essential to the research, but also take on the status of primary sources.

source: http://www.uta.fi/FAST/FIN/RESEARCH/sources.html