DITA Course Work 1

I hope to combine the theory attained during the introduction to Web 1.0, and my working knowledge of a school library, within this blog-post. Web 1.0 comprises of The Internet, the World Wide Web, Databases and Information Retrieval; according to Richard Butterworth, the terms ‘internet’ and ‘world wide web’ are used interchangeably. He states, there is an important difference: to take a motoring analogy, the internet is the road and the World Wide Web is a type of car that you can drive around on that road.

It was in 1960, the onset of a worldwide network of networks developed, allowing computers in remote locations the ability to share information and communicate with each-other. This development has reinvented and continues to reinvent the way we communicate, gain knowledge, consume, and even the way we think. The ease at which we can access programs, files, data and other resources from central computers is phenomenal due to the advent of the Internet. The World Wide Web however, is the means by which we access the information that is on the internet, developed in 1990; it is not the only means of communication via the internet another example is email. With the introduction of the World Wide Web searching for relevant information on the World Wide Web is often a frustrating task, especially for students. Yes, the Internet can be a valuable extension to the school's library collection. But it is mammoth in scale, unordered, and mainly unchecked. According to Christoph Hölscher and Gerhard Strube,

 “The accelerated growth of the World Wide Web has turned the Internet into an immense information space with diverse and often poorly organized content. Online users are confronted with rapidly increasing amounts of information as epitomized by the buzzword "information overload." While skills necessary for browsing individual websites seem to be available to users after only minimal training (Hurtienne and Wandtke, 1997), considerably more experience is required for query-based searching (Pollock and Hockley, 1997) and inter-site navigation.”

Within a school library environment knowing what Uniform Resource Locator or URL to click on can be overwhelming as a student, especially when search engines give a plethora of options, which aren’t necessarily ranked in order of relevance. Search engines, for instance Google aren’t always reliable in terms of content posted as the “best match”; this then continues to considerably validate the role of a school librarian, in that there is so much information out there, someone has to sort through it and make it palpable for the relevant audience ‘The essential problem in information representation and retrieval remains how to obtain the right information for the right user at the right time’ (Chu, 2003).  A key factor is dissemination of information, and ALEXANDRIA is a database management system, that has been utilised and it houses the titles of all forms of media within the school library and makes it quite simple to search the content of the library as well as combining the web, which allows for a wider scope of information; without getting lost in the shelves.  A database is defined as an integrated collection of data shareable between users and application systems. The DBMS is the complex piece of software, which acts as the interface between the users and the data. (Richard Butterworth)

It is through Database Management Systems, like Alexandria which is utilised within a school environment, information is organized in keeping with the student’s needs and queries. In order to obtain the information,  Standard Query Language (SQL) commands allocate the information for the student. Computers do not understand normal language; they instead read and interpret a binary code by assigning a bit string to each particular symbol or instruction like ASCII text and it is the foundation from which documents like database records and web pages are formed. Computers do not understand normal language; they instead look for the metadata within the component in order to display the desired information. (HTML) and Hypertext is the language that is used within web pages to link various documents together and allows the information to be read and understood by the Browser used to carry out the search. Peter Brophy states that need will be expressed in many ways, and will be interpreted and turned into requests for information objects.  (P114)

Information is attained through direct commands within the database; however the request made by the student requires far less complicated measures and it is done through the use of natural language.  

Information retrieval searches can be done via natural language and controlled vocabularies, which is, through a particular question or phrase fed into the search engine, or more precise wording for a more direct result. To attain these results, Boolean operators are utilised.

” A Boolean search strategy retrieves those documents which are ‘true’ for the query. This formulation only makes sense if the queries are expressed in terms of index terms (or keywords) and combined by the usual logical connectives AND OR and NOT.” (van Rijsbergen, C. J.)

For students who frequently use Google or Bing search engines this is a particularly useful skill especially as it refines the search and targets their desired results more specifically. As a librarian, one of the tasks is to demonstrate the use of Boolean terms in hope of aiding the students in their research.

Student’s needs are usually Informational, and information will be present on more than one page.  Information seekers develop strategies for finding, choosing and using information. Their strategies are built on three skill areas: reading, information –handling and technical. Brophy p 45

I believe that the library can position itself to be the provider of such skills needed to efficiently gain information from the Web, without subjecting oneself to Information Overload. The adaptation of the library within the curriculum development within schools will help students in their quest for knowledge and more so in accurate information retrieval.

References

Broder, A. (2002). A taxonomy of web search SIGIR Forum Fall, 36(2). 

Brophy, Peter (2007), The Library in the twenty-first Century 2^nd ed, London: Facet Publishing

Chu, H. (2003), Information representation and retrieval in the digital age, New Jersey: Information today.

Hölscher Christoph and Gerhard Strube, Web Search Behavior of Internet Experts and Newbies http://www9.org/w9cdrom/81/81.html

MacFarlane Andy, Richard Butterworth, and Jason Dykes (2011), Lecture 02: The Internet and the World Wide Web INM348 Digital Information Technologies and Architectures, London : City University http://moodle.city.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=267300

MacFarlane Andy, Richard Butterworth, and Jason Dykes (2011), Lecture 03: Structuring and querying information stored in databases, INM348 Digital Information Technologies and Architectures , London : City University

http://moodle.city.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=267307

MacFarlane Andy, Lecture 04: Information Retrieval , INM348 Digital Information Technologies and Architectures, London : City University

 http://moodle.city.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=267314

van Rijsbergen, C. J. Information Retrieval. London: Butterworths, 1979. Available at http://www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/Keith/Preface.html Chpt 5

Zakon, R. H. (2005), Hobbes' Internet Timeline. 
From the launch of Sputnik to the World Wide Web as we know it - this chronological list of events contributing to the development of the Internet is perhaps the definitive history. 
web: http://www.zakon.org/robert/internet/timeline/