01 Prelude (Information Research)
Description
This article is from the Information Research FAQ, by David Novak david@spireproject.com with numerous contributions by others.
01 Prelude (Information Research)
Many of us unwittingly digest great amounts of information in the
course of a day. Our information needs are more modest and usually
repetitive. When we have questions, we reach for a small collection of
preferred information sources close at hand with a collection of
assessments as to what is credible and trusted.
As a child, these sources include the school library, an encyclopedia
and parents. All the sources are trusted.
As an adult, these sources include the state library, the newspaper,
bookstores and current magazines. Adults understand truth has become a
little more relative, but when the evening news declares presidential
hopeful George W Bush is ahead by 3% (on a sample of 707) we slip into
thinking he is leading.
There is more to information literacy. It is, after all, a profession.
There are tools you know nothing about and techniques you have never
heard of. There is a specialized vocabulary just made to confuse you.
Research, or rather information research (to distinguish it from
lab-coat style research) is so very much more involved.
Yet there is great simplicity to research too. Just under the murky
mist of confusing resources rests a solid platform to stand on. In any
one field there are just a handful of databases, directories and
periodicals to consider. After decades of library and information
industry evolution, clearly valuable sources have already floated to
the top, monopolizing their respective fields. Most cities have just
one or two primary newspapers. Large industries like book publishing
have few book databases and a handful of primary book distributors.
Enters the internet: not so much a change of information as a
revolution in access to information. Previously you could justify
having just a handful of preferred information sources because these
were the sources easily available. Today, and the future, is filled
with information close at hand. We are dropped into a morass of
competing information just waiting to capture our attention, and strain
both our capacity to absorb information and our capacity to understand
the differences between sources.
A great segment of our community will fall back to tried and true
information sources they grew up with: state library, bookstore, local
newspaper. The better alternative sources will be ignored for no
particular reason. The rush of the information revolution will push
past them. They will only hear of changes when their information needs
suddenly change - and they are confronted with a vast collection of
unfamiliar options, and struggle with understanding what sources they
need.
A smaller segment of our community, by virtue of frequently tackling
questions best answered with unfamiliar sources, will be driven to
understand the information world: to become truly information literate.
There is another story here too. The way our society handles
information is undergoing some very fascinating changes. Any
predictions for the future should acknowledge the tension and flow of
information in our society. Take, for example, the vast surplus of
information emerging on the internet, and the convulsions of the
commercial information industry in response. Rather than focusing on
how information is organized, we can also focus on how information
becomes organized. The who, where and why of information, the
sociological perspective, adds meaning to the phrase "information
revolution".
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
It was another warm day. The young Egyptian boy strode purposely out
the gate towards the river. The Nile was low this time of year. Very
abundant with fish and bird life. With luck, Shakh would return at
sunset with food for the pantry. Mother would be pleased with that.
Shakh knew fishing had changed little over the last hundred years. The
walls of his family's ancestral home had just such a scene of his
grandfather fishing on the Nile from a small reed boat. The thinly
carved relief was complete with spear, fish, ducks and Shakh's
grandmother nearby holding lotus flowers.
Shakh stopped by old-man Jacob on his short walk to the bank of the
Nile. He liked the old trader. Years ago Jacob had traveled to the
Levant and brought back many strange artifacts. Some even came as far a
field as the Harrapan people who were said to live beyond Sheba, across
the waves, some three years journey away. He especially liked the small
black head carved in a style so unlike anything else Shakh had seen.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Harrapan people lived on the banks of the great Indus river in
modern-day Pakistan. A great civilization almost on par with the
Sumerians and the more distant Egyptians, very little remains today.
They built vast cities of clay brick with rectangular city blocks. They
built drains, public toilets and state granaries. They were the first
to populate the Indus river valley. (see
http://www.harappa.com/indus2/index.html)
Little remains. The Harrapan civilization fell with the arrival of the
Aryan race and the intervening millennia treated their past poorly. The
arrival of Islam erased much of their history as did the shifting Indus
river itself. The British used the bricks from one ancient city in the
construction of a great railway. Only today are the archaeological digs
once again unearthing the past.
I search for Harrapa on the internet. Nothing special, just type
'Harrapa' into any of the popular search engines and I uncover
harrapa.com, a website devoted to some recent information from these
digs. Looks good. Pictures of ancient pots. Children's toys. A map to
an ancient city.
Of course, Shakh would have known of the Harrapan civilization. While
it is uncertain ancient Egyptian ever visited in person, goods and
rumors traveled far from trader to trader. Ancient Egyptians, while not
accomplished conquerors abroad, did travel and mix with distant
peoples.
Shakh lived in a civilization centuries distant from us, yet both you
and Shakh know a similar amount about the Harrapan civilization. The
intervening years have not made everything clear. Even the information
revolution has not changed the facts. Both you and Shakh have just a
single source of information about the Harrapan civilization. You have
the pictures on harrapa.com and our short excerpt here. Shakh has the
old-man's art object to look at, the old-man's myth of a civilization
beyond the waves.
This story carves the act of searching in deep relief. Searching is a
skill, a trade and to some a profession. It is also just a simple task
of finding information - something we do every day, in so many ways,
without any of the difficulties we will get into later in this FAQ.
The difficulties only emerge when you want to do something spectacular.
Should you wish to know something specific about the Harrapan
civilization, or understand something contentious - then we require a
greater degree of expertise and experience. The search becomes a
challenging adventure in its own right.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The Nile was always a slow river but three months out of the year it
burst its banks and flooded the fields, bringing life on the banks of
the Nile to a complete halt. For these three months Shakh's family
would move into the ancestral home in the streets surrounding the great
pyramids. It was an old home, centuries old. Well suited to their needs
with a storeroom for food, separate rooms for the parents, and an
active social life in close proximity to others. In many ways, this was
the most exciting time for young Shakh. For the rest of the year he
lived in relative isolation in the village by the Nile. For these three
months, he lived in a city, bustling with activity, construction and
recreation.
Shakh had expected this year to be like the last but his father secured
Shakh an important position - he would be in training to become a
scribe. Father had grand plans for young Shakh, plans that extended far
beyond life as a scribe. What's more, with luck and further prosperity,
Shakh's father had the means to secure his further advance.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Much of ancient Egypt is available for us to read off the walls of the
many remaining buildings. They were not a literate nation, yet were
able to adorn almost everything with writing and pictures. They lived
in the most enlightened society of the day. Years later, Egypt would
gift the fledgling Hellenic state a full third of their Greek
vocabulary.
This is part of the reason for such an interest in travelling to Egypt.
It is the visual symbols that inform us and draw us in so deeply.
Standing before the great religious statues, we begin to feel how it
was to live and work in that day. To run amok as a young student,
waiting for the Nile to subside once again.
Yet, there is much more to knowing ancient Egypt than just the
monuments and wall reliefs. Years of study has recovered their lost
language of hieroglyphs. Years of archaeology has unearthed their daily
lives.
History and Archaeology are fine examples of searching in practice.
Both fields struggle openly with the bias and uncertainty each new fact
brings forth. Malta is a small island off the coast of Sicily, close to
Tunisia. Should evidence emerge of ancient Egyptians living on Malta,
what does it mean? Was Malta an Egyptian conquest or an occasional
station for their fishing fleet?
This uncertainty applies to all information, in all situations. One of
the first events for the new regime in Pakistan was to acknowledge that
important national statistics, like the national GDP figures, had been
fudged to a serious and significant degree. Important national
statistics are not intrinsically true because of their source. This is
not a problem solely of underdeveloped nations. Rumor suggests that
during the height of Singapore's land value bubble their national
figures were unreliable too.
Searching is a skill and an attitude. In this FAQ we progressively
unfold the way information is found. Initially, let's cover a simple
way to find information; a structured approach to an everyday problem.
Afterwards, we shall look more closely, and with more complexity, at
the world of information.
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