Information Creation as a Process

 

Knowledge can be expressed in different styles, which has an impact on how information is used and shared. It is important to look to the underlying processes of creation as well as the final product to critically evaluate the usefulness of the information.  In other words, what makes a book a book and a newspaper article a newspaper article has nothing to do with how one accesses it, but with the process that went into creating it. Understanding this principle helps students navigate the information they find online and evaluate it according to the process underlying its creation, rather than by a set of memorized, constantly changing, inconsistent characteristics.

Blog Homework

Identify the format of the sources you find for your research topic and articulate why the chosen formats are appropriate for the information need.

My topic is about an investigation into the use of institutional repositories (IRs) South African Universities.

Journal Articles:

A comparative overview of the development of the institutional repositories at the University of Cape Town and at the University of Pretoria.

http://dl.cs.uct.ac.za/conferences/etd2011/papers/etd2011_macha.pdf

First International Conference on African Digital Libraries and Archives (ICADLA-1) Moahi -1 Institutional Repositories: towards harnessing knowledge for African development.

http://wiredspace.wits.ac.za/jspui/bitstream/10539/8950/1/35%20Moahi.pdf

 

News Paper Articles:

What stops academics from sharing?

http://www.iol.co.za/news/what-stops-academics-from-sharing-1.1901283#.VfZ9E5emHCs

South Africa: Open Access Is a Development Issue - the Status Quo Needs to Be Challenged

http://allafrica.com/stories/201508190569.html

Video:

Capacity Building for Repositories: Helena Asamoah-Hassan https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Czqp9z5GqEk
 
Book:Katsirikou,  Anthi, Open Access to STM Information: Trends, Models and Strategies for Libraries Volume 153 of IFLA publications, International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions, Publisher: Walter de Gruyter, 2011,207 pages.

Website:
Institutional Repository  Unisahttp://uir.unisa.ac.za/
UWC Repositoryhttp://etd.uwc.ac.za/xmlui/

Reference Material:
Selected Institutional Repository http://www.anu.ac.ke/library/e-resources/selected-institutional-repository/

 

My first activity will be to find journal article which is a research article on a specific topic, authored by an expert in their field of study, and which has been peer-reviewed and published in an academic journal. It’s not easy to create an article and it can take some time before getting published. The research process can take a long time to find information before it gets published. I will transform this article into a slide share which is available at:   
http://www.slideshare.net/GraceVanNiekerk/a-comparative-overview-of-the-development-of-the-institutional-repositories-at-the-university-of-cape-town-and-at-the-university-of-pretoria

My second activity will be to find a blog on my research topic because a blog is a personal account posted online without any kind of review. It is easy to create and can be published immediately and the person posted the blog can edit at any time. Blogs is not so long and not so must research is necessary to find information. I will therefore transform this blog into a newspaper article.  A newspaper article describes a recent event and is written by a journalist, reviewed by their editor, and posted online. 

http://blog.uwc.ac.za/?p=66

Information in any format is produced to convey a message and is shared via a selected delivery method. The reason why this concept is so helpful is that it does not rely on appearance or location and it is responsive to different information seeking contexts.