Recap of Week 3 & 4 Classes

I was a slacker and didn't do a post for week 3 so I'm gonna just combine week 3 & 4.

Digital Information Technologies and Architectures (INM 348)
Week 3 involved looking at databases, which were created as a way to store data centrally and make it easier to access. Our exercise for this week was to construct 10 database queries. I found this exercise to be quite interesting. It was a challenge to learn how exactly do to this but once I got the hang of it, it was rather fun. You definitely get a sense of accomplishment from learning to apply what you learn to specific cases to get the right results. The standard format for queries is as follows:
SELECT columns
FROM tables
WHERE something is true;
So for example, the answer I got for problem one (to list the publisher, company and city of publishers in New York) was:
select pubid, name, company_name, city
from publishers
where city = "New York";
Week 4 was about Information Retrieval, which is basically what you do when you search for information via Google or other search engines. Precision of retrieval measures the proportion of retrieved documents which are relevant. You get this figure by dividing:

Relevant documents retrieved

                                                      

Total documents retrieved

Recall has an inverse relationship with precision and is measured as follows:

Relevant documents retrieved

                                                                              

Total # of relevant documents in the database

Library and Information Science Foundation (INM 301)

The topic for Week 3 was The History of Library and Information Science. Self-explanatory. We went from tasks of early librarians (organizing, adding titles, listing parts of documents, listing documents on shelf) to the development of a classification system of the world's knowledge in the form of a draft encyclopedia by Francis Bacon (1620) to Martin Schrettinger first coining the phrase "library science" in 1808, etc. The advent and role of special libraries was mentioned, and the steps of the information chain were listed: authorship/creation, dissemination/publication, organization, indexing and retrieval, and finally use.
Week 4 was about Information, Documents, and Collections. The three paradigms discussed were: system paradigm, cognitive paradigm, and socio-cognitive paradigm. We looked at Shannon and Weaver's Mathematical Theory of Communication, which calculates the amount of info that can be transmitted over a channel. Karl Popper (he keeps popping up in our discussions...get it? Hahaha. Yeah, lame, I know) suggested a theory of "Three Worlds," the first of which is the physical world, the second is the mental world of each individual, and the third is communicable knowledge. We also talked about the four levels of documents: 1) works (e.g. Shakespeare's Hamlet); 2) expressions (the English text of Hamlet); 3) manifestations (specific edition of the English text of Hamlet); and 4) items (this copy in my hand).

Spanish
We went over adjectives for things and for people (para cosas y para personas). Also, we covered gerunds (in English, the -ing verbs). So "talking" = hablando. This is used for any person the same; there's no changing the verb as there would be in present tense (hablo, hablas, habla, etc). Yolanda asked us: ¿Comó vienes a la uni? My answer: Vengo a pie/ Vengo andando. To which she replied: ¡Qué suerte! ("How do you come to university?", "I walk", "How lucky!").


Information Management and Policy (INM 341)
This was our two weeks of Information/Copyright Law. So...laws. What did I get out of it? England doesn't have a constitution. America wins. I think their law system is even more confusing than ours in America. How does that happen? I'll not hurt my brain again with all the breaches of confidence and actions in tort and contracts and whatnot. There's some laws. Don't break them. The end.

Research Evaluation and Communication (INM 356)
Week 3 was about Experimenting, Observing, & Evaluating. Experimenting is usually objective, positivist, and scientific, while observation is typically subjective and based on interpretation. Simple enough.
Week 4 was about Surveys, which can be split into interviews, focus groups, questionnaires, Delphi studies, and critical incidents. Interviews can be unstructured/naturalistic, semi-structured, or structured and can take place face-to-face, over the phone, or online/via chat. Questions can be closed or open. Focus groups involve usually 5-10 participants and allows group members to spark ideas off each other. A Delphi study involves a group interacting over time without ever actually coming together. It usually lasts 2 or 3 rounds to reach a consensus. Critical incidents are simply case studies. Sampling for studies can be complete, random, systematic/stratified, or convenience.

Woo! The end. No lectures next week so I can put off the recap of week 5 for a while, as I do. Now back to working on my DITA assignment! Slowly but surely, that one.

Recap of Week 2 Classes

Digital Information Technologies and Architectures (INM 348)

We talked about the Internet and the World Wide Web. Honestly, I was a little foggy on the difference because they are used pretty widely as synonyms. The metaphor that was used helped me understand it perfectly though - if the Internet is the road, then the Web is the car. The Internet is made up of more than just the Web (things such as email). We talked about domain names and URLs, etc. Our lab exercise involved us working with HTML to create webpages. I did everything alright until it got to putting the pages on the web. Somehow I messed that up and I'll have to figure it out in lab tomorrow. We also tinkered with CSS, which I need to look into further because my understanding of it is much more limited than my understanding of HTML.

Library and Information Science Foundation (INM 301)

The topic of this week's lecture was Intellectual Tools. We examined how documents and knowledge were organized from ancient times to now. In Mesopotamia, texts were indexed by their first few words, as titles were not used. Some of the most notable ancient libraries had very large collections. The Palace Library at Ebla, Syria (2600-2300 BCE), for example, had two storerooms that housed 17,000 clay tablets. That's a lot of tablets. Assurbanipal's palace library at Nineveh didn't last long: 650-612 BCE. Here they used identification tags on texts that listed the location (jar, shelf, room). Skipping some things and jumping forward a bit now...the advent of the printing press allowed more copies of texts to be made and collected. Encyclopedias began to show up in the 18th Century, around the time of the Enlightenment. The Library of Congress was founded in 1800. Pannizzi's "91 rules" served as the cataloging code for the British Museum; this was paralleled by Jewett at the Smithsonian. It was really interesting to see all the different ways of classification and the evolution of library organization over the ages.

Spanish

I was not as intimidated this time. Even though I hadn't managed to study much, I still didn't end up looking completely brainless. Yay! We were asked to write and discuss what we did that day. The professor took my work up and projected it on the overhead. Luckily, I only made a couple of mistakes. I said "en la mañana" and "en el tardes" instead of saying "por la mañana" and "por la tarde" ("in the morning" and "in the afternoon"). Not so bad. So my final product looked a bit like this: "Por la mañana, voy a la oficina de correos. Envío tres paquetes a los Estados Unidos. Envío un paquete a mi madre y dos paquetes a mis amigos. Por la tarde, estudio." We then covered the difference between the verbs ser and estoy. Our last exercise was to ask some classmates basic questions (what's your name, where are you from, what are you studying, etc).

Information Management and Policy (INM 341)

This week, we covered information overload. Does anyone else in the Library Science course (or the others) feel like they're suffering from this? I am. I feel like there's about a billion related works I could be reading, that have been on the suggested reading lists. I just don't know which ones to pick and there's no way I can manage to read them all. I will need to work on which ones I choose and how I handle the seeming overload. I found a lot of this lecture interesting. For example, Reuters did a study in 1997 called "Dying for Info" in which it was shown that 2/3 of people in this study felt that information overload caused loss of job satisfaction, 2/3 felt it damaged their personal relationships, and 1/3 felt it damaged their health. Schwartz's "paradox of choice" tells us that 10 is the highest number of possible choices we can deal with and still make a rational choice. Perhaps this is why I'm terrible at making decisions. Not my fault! Too many choices! Some possible coping tactics for information overload are: information avoidance, "if it's important they'll tell me," and satisficing (just choosing based on knowing a little but not everything; in other words, settling). I also felt the "handle only once" and "fear the 'might be useful'" tactics would help in my life, as I tend to keep things that could maybe be important later (but not really) and then wonder why I have so much junk on my desk and in my life. There are also some possibly advantageous programs mentioned in a suggested article, one of which (called Leechblock) limits the time you spend on certain websites each day.

Research Evaluation and Communication (INM 356)

This week, we looked at methods of desk research. Desk research forms a part of all research and is the only method used in some studies. Types of desk research are: literature review, meta-analysis, conceptual analysis, historical analysis, content analysis, discourse analysis, and bibliometrics. Meta-analysis gives an overall picture by examining results of several studies. Conceptual analysis aims to clarify terms and concepts. Discourse analysis focuses on how language is used. Bibliometrics examines patterns in recorded information, such as size and growth of literatures and changes in communication patterns. The others are self-explanatory, I think.

Whew! I've got some textbooks already, as I've mentioned. I have Knowledge Management: An Integrated Approach (2nd Edition) by Ashok Jashapara, as was suggested for our Info Management and Policy module. I'm on chapter 3 now. I like this one. It's easy to follow and covers a lot of the stuff we talk about in lectures. I'm about to start chapter 6 of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (3rd Edition) by Moraville and Rosenfeld. This one was suggested for DITA. It gets off to a very slow start but I think it might finally be picking up the pace a bit now. At least, I hope it gets progressively better. Week 3 starts tomorrow!!

Recap of Week 1 of Classes

I'm a little late on this one but I thought I would try throwing all my thoughts on all my classes into one post. It might be a bit chaotic and I'm not sure if my terrible excuse for a memory can handle going all the way back to Monday. I'll give it a shot though.

1) Digital Information Technologies and Architectures (DITA) (INM 348)

First class. 9am on Monday. Excellent. We talked about computers and what they do, binary, and file types. Not that difficult. I was a little rusty on the binary thing but it was easy enough to grasp. The whole ASCII part, though, with binary used to represent letters and whatnot would certainly be a little tougher than just 00000001 = 1 and 00000010 = 2, etc. I haven't really looked into it much. In lab we did an exercise in which we created a document and made formatting changes to it, then opened it in notepad to see what the formatting did to the document. Whoa. Not English. Lots of symbols and undecipherable (by me) gibberish. I have to say, however, that it is amazing how very complicated even the smallest changes can be underneath the surface. We then made our blogs. Simple enough.

2) Library and Information Science Foundation (INM 301)

The lecture was on the History of Information. The five information ages are as follows:

• the age of spoken language

• the age of writing and recorded information

• the age of printing

• the age of mass communication

• the age of networked digital computing

We looked at what can be considered language in terms of written/recorded symbols (is there a way to decipher it? Meaning, is there more than one sample of it which can be used to compare and translate the symbols somehow?). Several different examples of ancient texts and writing were shown in the slides. Very interesting stuff. 

3) Spanish: Lower Intermediate (Not part of my degree or anything but still recapping it)

I haven't taken a Spanish class in about 7 years. Sure, I learned a bit at work these past few months but most of what Papi and Alberto taught us were cuss words and therefore not all that useful in an academic setting. I followed the lesson as best I could although I'm not at all sure what the professor was saying sometimes and she talked rather fast too. I got my Instant Immersion: Spanish CD-ROMs in my package from home this weekend so I'll be using those to play catch-up and have study times so as not to look dumb in class. I also downloaded a couple of Spanish dictionary and conjugation apps on my phone. Huzzah!

4) Information Management Policy (INM 341)

We looked at different models of information management (TS Eliot/pyramid model vs LS Lowry/cognitive model and so on). We also discussed information as a resource and how it is different from other resources in that it is difficult to ascribe a monetary value to information. Information is also a unique resource in that it is sharable: it can simultaneously be given and retained.

5) Research Evaluation and Communication (INM 356)

This class will serve as a basis/introduction for our dissertation research. The lecture discussed the various ways of collecting and analyzing data, qualitative vs. qualitative data, and how important it is to set up a plan for how the information collected will be analyzed before even collecting said information. We talked about the pros and cons of the three different types of research: surveys; experimenting,
 evaluating
 and observing;
and 
desk
 research.

So that's the first week in a nutshell. I've received a few of my books in the mail already and am starting to read them. Well, I've read one chapter in one book so far. I'd say that's still progress. Week 2 starts tomorrow!