by The Open University
Available in 48 free installments
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87% of items that are filed into a filing cabinet are never looked at again. STANFORD UNIVERSITY
The world is producing nearly two exabytes of new and unique information every year ? an exabyte is a new term that had to be coined for a billion gigabytes. All the words ever spoken by human beings comes to five exabytes. University of California (Berkley)
More new information has been produced in the last 30 years than in the 5,000 years before that. INFORMATION SKILLS FOR AN INFORMATION SOCIETY ? Carol Kuhlthau (1987) Eric Clearinghouse for Information, ISBN 0937597147
A new blog is created every second. TECHNORATI
10% of salary costs are wasted as employees search for information to complete tasks. COMPUTERWORLD
The world today bombards you with facts. There is such a wealth of information coming at you from a variety of sources that to be able to work effectively you need to have some system for organising it all. Think of a typical day ? how much time do you waste looking for a piece of information you need?
Jo, a student, has identified some sources to write an assignment on GM foods. Have a look at the three images below and see if you can spot what problems might occur if Jo wants to use these.
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This is what we thought:
Image 1: We think that these must be some notes that Jo has made about one of the sources s/he's looked at ? there's even a good quote, flagged up as important ? but there's no indication of the title of the book or journal article in which s/he found it.
Image 2: We think this looks like a photocopy of a journal article, but it isn't a very good one because the photocopier has cut the name of the journal and the article title off the top.
Image 3: We think this is part of a reference ? it could be a reference to a book or a journal article, there isn't really any clue, and it could be the title of a chapter or journal article, or a quote. Jo can't remember why it was so important.
To use these items in an assignment, Jo would need the full reference which s/he hasn?t got. Jo would need to spend more time trying to track these sources down again if s/he wanted to use them. By taking a bit more time to be organised at the start, you can actually save yourself time later on.
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