Introduction to Synthesis

A synthesis is a written discussion that draws on one or more sources. It follows that your ability to write syntheses depends on your ability to infer relationships among sources - essays, articles, fiction, and also no written sources, such as lectures, interviews, observations. This process is nothing new for you, since you infer relationships all the time - say, between something you've read in the newspaper and something you've seen for yourself, or between the teaching styles of your favorite and least favorite instructors. In fact, if you've written research papers, you've already written syntheses. In an academic synthesis, you make explicit the relationships that you have inferred among separate sources.

A synthesis is based on two or more sources, you will need to be selective when choosing information from each. It would be neither possible nor desirable, for instance, to discuss in a ten-page paper on the battle of Wounded Knee every point that the authors of two books make about their subject. What you as a writer must do is select the ideas and information from each source that best allow you to achieve your purpose.

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Information Analysis

This week we were taught about the evaluation of Sources, why we must evaluate and the criteria for the evaluation. Since the Internet is ever-growing and countless numbers of information are being put up by many people. Therefore Information  may not be reliable. The evaluation of the sources is becoming more important due to this.

There are 7 criteria that needs to be considered for evaluating the Internet sources. They are:

1. Purpose-  We should be aware of the source's objective. It should make it's purpose obvious at first.   A good source will be use to understand and use which will not make the users confused.

2. Scope-  What subject does the Source cover? We should know the breadth, depth, time and format of the source. It is necessary that it should have detail description of the concerned topic.

3. Authority- The person who holds the power to do whatever he wants with the work. It is necessary to identify the authority and their expertise.

4. Audience- It is necessary to know who the intended users are. It helps in determining the level of the material.

5. Information Content- The content is based on accuracy, currency and uniqueness.

6. Design and Layout- It should be well organized and logically presented for understanding the information easily. The information contained should be well divided for easy use and navigability. The color, style, multimedia and functionality should also be taken into consideration.

7. Access/ Work ability- How easy and user friendly is the source? the following aspects are taken into consideration when judging its accessibility, ease of use, search-ability, brows-ability, software reliability, connectivity, cost policy, censorship, language, user support.

These are summaries of useful criteria for evaluating resources.

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Paraphrasing, Summarizing and Quoting

We learnt about the integration of sources. There are basically three ways in which we use our sources to provide evidence for our arguments. They are Quotations, Paraphrases and Summaries. We learnt that it is important to integrate sources for various reasons such as expanding the depth of the writing, giving examples on several points of view on a subject, etc.

Choosing text to integrate:  noting key ideas and main points, summarizing the main idea, paraphrasing important supporting points and directly quoting the main points.

During summarizing, the main points should be in our own words. It is shorter and takes a broad overview of the source.

Paraphrasing involves putting a passage from a material into our own words. It could be shorter or the same length as the original one and it is usually done for the most significant part.

During Quoting the author's word should be put in the same way as it was. It should be identical and must match the source document. The actual words are important here and cannot be replaced.

Single Phrases and In-Text Citation

Single phrases show someone's work. It shows that the words and ideas belong to someone other than the author.

In-Text Citation are the parenthetical pieces of information that appear usually at the end of a quote, paraphrase or summary.

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Citation Documenting Information Sources

Bibliography/Reference

Bibliography is a list of books and other materials which have some relationship to each other,

The listed materials contain the following components:

-Author

-Title

-Place of publication

-Publisher

-Year of publication

For e.g.,

Drucker, P.F.(2000).Innovation and entrepreneurship:Practice and Principle.London:Heinemann

Plagiarism: 

Plagiarism is using others' ideas and words without acknowledging the source and sometimes claiming as their own. Giving the credit to others' work you are using is necessary. The failure to do so may lead to some legal actions or charges whether intentional or unintentional. Many institutions do not allow plagiarism.

APA Style: The Basics

APA(American Psychological Association). The APA style was made in 1928 by Social Science professionals. This style provides guidelines for publication in Social Science Journals. It also lends consistency and makes texts more readable by those who assess or publish them.

This style is used for Term papers, Research reports, Empirical studies etc.

The style for Title, Author, and Documentation have rules which were taught in the class. There were different formats which were from the APA style. The following are some which use APA style, Books( may be one or more authors, have more than one editions), Journal, Journal article via internet etc.

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Search Strategies Basics ( Transactions and Wildcard & Phrase Searching)

Transactions and Wildcard

This week was spent on learning the usage of truncation and wildcard. These two help to broaden our search capabilities by allowing us to retrieve multiple spellings of a root word, such as singular and plural forms.

Truncation: Using a wildcard at the end of a word to search for multiple results.  It expands the search to locate all words beginning with the same root. Example: Teen* will give teen, teens, teenage, teenager, etc.

Wildcard:  A wildcard is a special character, such as an asterisk (*), question mark (?), or pound sign (#), that replaces one or more letters in a word. It usually represents a single character. Example: wom?n will give woman, women, etc.

Phrase Searching

This type of search is used with a string of words(instead of a single word) to search with. It will yield fewer results. When looking for information on Information Literacy the result of the search will yield many irrelevant documents since each of the words has its own meaning. But it has whole different meaning when put together so to be precise we either use "  " or (  ). Example: (Information Literacy).

It's use has proven very effective and time-saving. This subject is certainly a must for the people of the information age. 

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Search Strategies Basics

When to use keywords, subject headings, phrases, single words?

This week's lesson was on the topic of how to search for information using basic strategies, like which terms to be used in order to get the broader result. Usually keywords are widely used when searching or brainstorming on some concerned topic. There is also the Subject headings which uses a standardized vocabulary, usually giving you more specific resources on your topic. Some examples are Library Subject headings, Science subject headings, Thesaurus of psychological index terms, etc.

Boolean Searching

Boolean operator or keywords

This searching allows you to group words together in an database or environment such as the World Wide Web to receive a number of different results. The results widely varies depending upon the grouping of the words. It is a common search strategy.
Boolean operators are words that connect a search that may add or subtract a concept to your search. It allows OR to expand or AND to limit our search. Most of the search engines allow the use of some Boolean searching.
Boolean queries- AND
It allows grouping of words for variety of results. For example, The query 'Beach AND California' produces results containing both words.

Boolean queries- OR
Using OR will broaden the search. The query 'Beach OR California' will yield results containing either the word beach or California. 

Boolean queries- NOT
NOT helps exclude words from the search. If a result has the word that you would like to search but it also contains another word you want to exclude, then it will not show that result.

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Search Tools

This week in class we were taught about the tools we can use to seek out information.
The main search tools are the INTERNET, Databases and Library catalogs.

A Library Catalog is a file cabinet containing individual cards with bibliographic information about specific items in the Library. There is OPAC, an online catalog through which we can search for the items required. It provides details about the book, audio-visuals and other materials found in the Library. The use of OPAC is very effective making all our tasks very easy and less time consuming.

The INTERNET is also a very effective source of information in fact it is the widest source of information available in this world. Therefore it is also called the information superhighway This week's class taught us to use it effectively, introducing us to the weakness and strengths of the internet. It is designed to search for information on the world wide web. The tools we use in internet are search engines, meta-search engines, information gateways, subject directories and specialized database. Information are searched through a limited number of websites. It cannot directly access other computers.
Search engines are designed to use world wide web to search for information. For e.g. http://www.google.com/ , etc.
 Meta-search engines is multiple-data source. It searches from multiple search engines in one single search page. For e.g. metacrawler(http://www.metacrawler.com)
Information gateways provides a central access point to internet for many internet sites that cover popular news and information resources. It includes internet catalogs, subject directories, virtual libraries and gateways. It specializes in resources on a particular field. Example: ELDIS: The gateway to development information http://www.eldis.org/
Subject directories is a collection of links to a larger number of internet resources organized by topic area. Example: Infomine(http://infomine.ucr.edu/). There is also the specialized databases that are also known as the invisible web. It includes statistics, schedules, maps, figures. but now we can find it on most of search engines. It provides a reliable and up-to-date information. Some examples are the bibliographic database, google scholar, commercial database, etc.

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Structure of Information

Structure of Information (Information Format)

This week's lesson included the three sources of Information
- Primary Source
- Secondary Source
- Tertiary Source 

 Primary Sources :
A primary source is an original object or document, first-hand information. These sources produce materials in the time where one may be investigating. It enables researchers to get the most accurate information of an historical event or time period.
The following also represent the primary sources of information,
Contemporary Accounts of an event written by the person who experienced or witnessed it.
Original Documents.
Published works written soon after the event.
Primary source includes
Diaries, Journals, Letters, Photographs, Interviews, Speeches, Audio or Video recordings, Manuscripts, Research reports, Autobiographies, etc.

"Diary of Anne Frank"- A diary written by Anne during the WWII is a primary source
"Long Walk to Freedom- The Autobiography of Nelson Mandela"- The life story of Nelson Mandela written by himself is a primary source.
"Gettysburg Address"- The speech given by Abraham Lincoln is a primary source.
 "Declaration of Independence"- A historical document of America is a primary source.
Others are Birth Certificates, Military Records,etc.
"Published First-hand accounts or stories"- John McCain's experience of being a war-prisoner in Vietnam.
"Sound Recordings and Interviews"- Live Addresses from Radio and Records of Face to Face talks are also primary sources.
"Photographs and Videos"- Photographs and Videos from WWII  are primary sources.
"Letters"-  A written form of communication that is usually sent through postal service.

Secondary Sources:

Something written about the primary source is a a secondary source. It is like a Second-hand information which are written sometime after the fact. There are also people who study the primary source closely and later interpret it in their own way. It is also a Secondary Source.

" If I tell you and you tell another; I am the primary source and you are the secondary source, Simple!"

Some of the Secondary sources:
Published works such as Journal Articles, Books,etc.
Biographies- Life story of great people written by someone else, Almanacs, Encyclopedias, History Books, textbooks etc. are all secondary sources.

There is also the Newspaper which can be both a primary or a secondary source.


Tertiary Sources:

It is a collection of both the primary and secondary sources. Most of the References are included in Tertiary source.
Examples, Guide to the Literature, Bibliographies of Bibliography, Directories of Directory etc.

LIBRARY
It is a place where many books are available. It also provides many services such as  book lending, photocopy, information search, reading rooms, multimedia collection, e-journals and many more.

Encyclopedia: A book containing information on all the subjects or limited to specific field or subject. It has two types: General and Special.
General encyclopedia includes encyclopedia Britannica, encyclopedia Americana, Oxford Junior encyclopedia and so on. Special encyclopedia has International encyclopedia of Social sciences, encyclopedia of Indian literature etc.

Dictionaries: A book that provides the definition for a word and has many other uses as well such as spelling, pronunciation, etc.
     There are also some alternative names for it. They are Glossary, Lexicon, Thesaurus, Vocabulary. Although they have an identical purpose, their is slightly different.

Geographical Sources:
  Maps, Atlases, Gazetteers, Globes, Travel Guides.

Year Book: A book on the annual development of an organization, a subject or in a geographical area.
  Example,  Manorama year book, Europa Year Book, etc.

Government publications: Official publication issued by the government.
  Example,  Statutes, Acts, Debate of Parliament,etc.

 Periodicals: Published on a regular basis. It can be issued in print, microform and electronic formats. It is expected to provide up-to-date Information on topics. E.g. Popular magazines, scientific journals,etc.


Information Retrieval Systems
- OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog)
- Databases
- The Internet

OPAC: An online catalog of all the materials in a Library. Any material present in a Library can be searched effectively here. OPAC's can searched using author, titles, etc.

Databases: Collection of digitized information organized for simplified, fast searching and retrieval. It is updated regularly and contains bibliographic citations or references.

The Internet: A high-speed electronic network that connects all the personal computers and Organizational computers around the world. It is connected through fibreoptics. WWW. (World Wide Web) is an international network of internet servers that allows access to unlimited amount of information.

Multimedia:

Audio,Visual and Audiovisual materials:

The multimedia materials are used in every field. It is very useful for bringing out detail information on various topics.
Audiovisual media includes CDs, DVDs, Videos, etc.
CD-ROMs are also a media greatly used in various fields. We can find two types of this CDs,  CD-I(Compact Disk Interactive) and CD-WORM.

Classification Scheme:
A system used to systematically organize the documents, books, etc. They are mainly used in Libraries. Two types of systems are mainly used ,they are
LCC( Library of Congress Classification scheme) and DDC(Dewey Decimal Classification scheme)

Micro form, Micro print, Micro cards, Micro fiche are all medias which contain a certain type of  information. Their sizes are usually very small.

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Information Literacy

Why should we learn Information Literacy?

- IL skills are the Foundation of modern democratic society

- Using information and technology in an effective way

Problems faced due to lack of information skills

- Using Limited or inappropriate sources of information

- Being disorganized

- Finding incomplete information

- Communicating the information ineffectively

- Accessing outdated information

- Using inaccurate or misleading information

- Being inefficient and wasting time in research.

There are six types of IL which are relevant in understanding this subject. They are given below

1. Library Literacy

2. Media Literacy

3. Internet Literacy

4. Research Literacy

5. Critical Thinking Literacy

Information Literacy:

Information literacy is a framework to solve problems. There is a process to solve problems, called Big six(6).

Big six(6) is the processes we take to solve problems via information literacy, and consist of:

1- Task definition: In this step we define the problem and it's requirements, and we generate questions that helps in clarify and define the task.

2- Information seeking behavior: We seek information by following two strategies, Determine range resources, and prioritize sources.

3- Location and access: In this step we locate the sources by seeking the appropriate sources   and we find or select the understandable information.

4- Information use: We engage with information( read, hear, view, touch ), after that we extract the information.

5- Synthesis: It's about to organize the collected information before we present it.

6- Evaluation: It's the last step in the process where we judge the process we followed to
collect the information and we judge the product that we got as a result or a solution of following the six steps. There are six standards in which we evaluate the sources, currency, accuracy, content, relevant, authority, useful.

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Web Applications

Web Application or Web Apps that an application is a piece of software. It can run on the internet, in our computer, in our phone or other electronic devices. It also refers to any applications or services in internet. For example, Google Documents, Windows Live Hotmail, Turbo Tax online etc. In another reference, Web browers are software applications that alloaws users to retrieve data and interact with content locted on web pages with in a website.
The Examples of Web Browsers:
Internet Explorer:

Mozila FireFox:

Opera:

We also learnt about Web Page that contained Web documents and HTML. In Web page, there are two types of Web pages like Static and Dynamic Web page.

In static Web page it's known as Web 1.0 that allows people to search information and read it. This type of Web page cannot be edited by visitor.

In Dynamic Web page, it's also known as Web 2.0 that allows users or people to interfact with information. Web 2.0 is the mozt popular term for advances Internet Technology and Applications such as Blogs, Wikipedia, Really Simple Syndication (RSS) and social bookmarking. Some examples of social sites such as Myspace, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr etc. In Web 2.0, comprises of the categories are social networking, Mashup and aggregators. Google Applications are widely used in the field of Infomation Technology and it's also available in the internet. We can use them wisely and efficiently in our lives.

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Trends in the internet and WWW

The internet is a global system of interconnected computer networks that use the standard Internet Protocol Suite (TCP/IP) to serve billions of users worldwide. It's a network of networks that consists of millions of private, public, academic, business and government networks of local to global scope that are linked by a board array of electronic, wireless and optical networking technologies. The internet carries an extensive range of information resources and services such as the inter-linked hypertext documents of the World Wide Web (WWW) and the infrastructure to support email.

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Database Management

A database management system is a set of software programs that allows users to create, edit and update data in database files, store and retrieve data from those database files. Data in a database can be added, deleted, changed, sorted or searched all using a DBMS. For example: If you were an employee in a large organization, the information about you would likely be stored in different files that are linked together. One file about you would pertain to your skills and abilities, another file to your income text status, another to your home, office address, telephone number and another to your annual performance ratings. By cross-referencing these files, someone could change a person's address in one file and it would automatically be reflected in all the other files.  

DBMS are commonly used to manage:

• Membership and subscription mailing lists
• Accounting and book keeping information 
• The data obtained from scientific research
• Customer information
• Inventory information
• Personal records
• Library information

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Information System

Nowadays, society become dependent on information systems. Information systems has help people in their daily life routine. Information system itself bring the meaning of business application in the computer that manage their operations, compete in the market place, accounts and manage human resources.

An information system can be defined technically as a set of interrelated components that collect or retrieve, process, store, and distribute information to support decision making and control in an organization. In addition to supporting decision making, coordination, and control, information systems may also help managers and workers analyze problems, visualize complex subjects, and create new products.
Three activities in an information system produce the information that organizations need to make decisions, control operations, analyze problems, and create new products or services. These activities are input, processing, and output. Input captures or collects raw data from within the organization or from its external environment. Processing converts this raw input into a more meaningful form. Output transfers the processed information to the people who will use it or to the activities for which it will be used. Information systems also require feedback, which is output that is returned to appropriate members of the organization to help them evaluate or correct the input stage.

                               Functions of an Information System

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Information Technology (IT) & Information and Communication Technology (ICT)

Information Technology and is pronounced (IT). It refers to anything related to computing technology, such as networking, hardware, software, the Internet or the people that work with this technologies. IT departments for managing the computers, networks and other technical areas of their businesses. Actually, IT include computer programming, network administration, computer engineering, web development, technical support and many other related occupations. Since we live in the 'information age', Information Technology has become a part of our everyday lives.

Information and Communication Technology, it's refer to technologies that provide access to information through telecommunications. It's similar to Information Technology (IT), but focuses primarily on communication technologies. This include the Internet, wireless networks, cell phones and other communication mediums.For example: Modern information and communication technology have created a "Global Village" in which people can communicate with others across the world as if they were living next door. For this reason, ICT is often studied in the context of how modern communication technology affect society.

ICT IN BANKING (KENIYA)

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Data, Information & Information Management

Data is raw material for data processing, data relates to fact, event and transactions. Data refers to unprocessed information.

Information is data that has been processed in such a way as to be meaningful to the person who receives it. It's anything that is communicated.

For example, researchers who conduct market research survey might ask a number of the public to complete questionnaires about a product or a service. These completed questionnaires are data, they are processed and analyze in order to prepare a report on the survey. This resulting report is information.

Information Management (IM) is the collection and management of information from one or more sources and the distribution of that information to one or more audiences. This sometimes involves those who have a stake in or a right to that information. Management means the organization of and control over the structure, processing and delivery of information. 

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