TRAC Seminar: Understanding Information

Every potential source of information on a subject isn't necessarily appropriate for your research question, particularly if the question involves an event. An important part of figuring out what kind of resources you or a student you're working with may need is considering the information timeline:

(Image courtesy of University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Libraries)

For example, if a student were interested in writing on the Ferguson trial and aftermath during the Fall 2015 semester, they would be able to find a wealth of information via the internet, news media, and magazines. Articles may even be available in very recently published scholarly journals. It would be difficult, however, to find books, government materials, and reference materials on the subject due to the recency of the event. Keeping this timeline in mind can help shape effective information-seeking practices.

When we work with numerical data, or search through databases for information, ultimately we do so in order to produce knowledge, whether within ourselves or for our professional or academic communities. The Information Pyramid visually explains how human understanding progresses from data to wisdom:

(image courtesy Wikimedia Commons)