Information Competency:
Ye Olde Working Website

John A. Cagle & Ross LaBaugh
California State University, Fresno
March 24, 1998

http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~johnca/infocomp/infowork.htm

Information Competency

Information Competency in Small Bytes

Note: Eventually this page will be broken into linked modular webpages.

9. Critical Thinking in the Age of Information

There is so much to know in the world. How can we begin to know it all? What do we need to know? How do we make sense of it? How does it affect what we do in our lives? How can we use it effectively? How can we use it wisely? This website is an introduction to what is called information competency. It is designed to help you understand in information is, why you need it, and how you can find it. It goes beyond that to show you how this information must be interpreted and analyzed before it is used. Finally, it points to ways to communicate what you have found to others.

Our goals are to help you understand your purpose, to help you figure out what you need to know, to learn ways to find this information, to begin to think critically about this information, to encourage you to communicate this information effectively in accomplishing your purpose. Plainly, if you work through this website, you should learn some useful things about research, about thinking clearly, and about writing. This website is designed for students at Fresno State, but if anyone else will benefit from it, we cordially invite you to do so and do good in the world.

In an interview with Bill Moyers, Vartan Gregorian, past president of the New York Public Library and currently president of Brown University, spoke of the awesome prospect of visiting a library for the first time:

In the British Museum, sitting there and seeing those millions of books--suddenly you feel humble. The whole of humanity is in front of you. What are you trying to do? Is it worth doing? What are you going to say or add or write that has not been said and written about? It gives you a sense of cosmic relation to the totality of humanity, but at the same time a sense of isolation. You have a sense of both pride and insignificance. Here it is, the human endeavor, human inspiration, human agony, human ecstasy, human bravura, human failures--all before you. You look around and say, "Oh my God! I am not going to be able to know it all." One gets thrilled and frightened at the same time in the presence of a library because it reminds one about one's past, present, and, most, of the possibilities of the future.

Betty Sue Flowers, ed., Bill Moyers: World of Ideas (NY: Doubleday, 1989), p. 181.

His recollection is striking because so many of us in our encounters with libraries shared his sense of awe and wonder, not to mention his apprehensions. Because of the scarcity and value of books and other printed materials, libraries have always been repositories of wisdom and knowledge; librarians sought out, copied, collected, and stored what was known in the world. In today's increasingly technological world, a library remains a central feature of human society, especially in universities. Beyond the books and magazines and journals and government reports within the walls of the library, the library is a link to the information in the rest of the world as well.

In a recent book, Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman offered "Five New Laws of Library Science":

• Libraries serve humanity.
• Respect all forms by which knowledge is communicated.
• Use technology intelligently to enhance service.
• Protect free access to knowledge.
• Honor the past and create the future.

Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman, Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness, and Reality (Chicago: American Library Association, 1995), p. 8.

Crawford and Gorman have added something to the world with these five laws, for they give us a way of looking at what libraries are and what they should be. But where did these laws come from? In writing their book, they reflected upon what they knew, upon what they did in their professional work (indeed, Gorman is Dean of Library Services at California State University, Fresno), and upon what they had read. They found inspiration in a 1931 book, Five Laws of Library Science, by an Indian librarian, S. R. Ranganathan, but saw that the original statement needed to be restated or "reinterpreted" for today's libraries and their likely future.

We can learn things from this example. New knowledge is linked to knowledge that came before. As you confront genuine problems in the world, in your personal life or in government or in work, for many reasons you will feel a need to solve them and you will find that you need information to help you do it and that you need to communicate with others. As scholars, throughout their book Crawford and Gorman followed conventional rules for using and acknowledging their sources--sometimes to illustrate a point, sometimes as proof in an argument, sometimes to aid their readers find more about a topic than they plan to tell.

It has been said that the average person is exposed to more information today in a week that Thomas Jefferson was exposed to in his entire lifetime. Thomas Jefferson was of course the third President of the United States of America, but what did he order to be written on his tombstone? "Thomas Jefferson, Founder of the University of Virginia." Clearly he valued education. Lucia Stanton described his collection of books:

Jefferson assembled three different collections in his lifetime -- one of which became the core collection of the Library of Congress. His first, which he valued at 200 British pounds, was lost when his house at Shadwell burned in 1770. After the destruction of the federal library in the war of 1812, Jefferson offered his own collection -- then over 6,700 volumes -- to the government. In 1815 he sold to the Library of Congress what he considered "the choicest collection of books" in the country for $23,950, considerably less than its value. Contemplating his empty shelves, Jefferson immediately commenced a third collection and owned over 2,000 volumes at his death in 1826.

Lucia C. Stanton, "Thomas Jefferson and Books: Some Highlights." Monticello: Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation, 1996. Internet: http://www.monticello.org/Matters/life/books.html.

Today's Library of Congress has grown considerably:

In 1992, the Library acquired its 100 millionth item. The collections now include approximately fifteen million books, thirty-nine million manuscripts, thirteen million photographs, four million maps, more than three and a half million pieces of music, and more than half a million motion pictures. The Library's collection of more than 5,600 incunabula (books printed before 1500) is the largest in the Western Hemisphere and its collections of maps, atlases, newspapers, music, motion pictures, photographs, and microforms are probably the largest in the world. In addition, the Library holds newspapers, prints, posters, drawings, talking books, technical reports, videotapes and disks, computer programs, and other audio, visual, and print materials.

John Y. Cole, "Jefferson's Legacy: A Brief History of the Library of Congress." Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1996. Internet: http://lcweb.loc.gov/loc/legacy/colls.html

The Henry Madden Library at Fresno State has over 772,324 books, 141,482 periodicals, and over a million microforms. These resources are not innumerable, because the librarians know exactly how many things the Library possesses and exactly where each thing is. That is the incredible thing about libraries today--there is so much to keep track of.

The problem for people living today is the same. Every day we are bombarded by information from everywhere. The information sources compete vigorously for our attention. Newspapers, radio in our bedroom to wake us up, television morning news at breakfast, talking with other people, radio in the car on the way to work if you're not listening to an audio-book, computers and telephones and magazines and mail (letters from friends and junk from practically everyone else) and cellular telephones and flyers on your windshield and motion pictures and billboards and--well, you get the idea perhaps. At one time people argued over whether the Moon was made of green cheese or not, but in 1968 the Apollo astronauts not only stood on the Moon itself but even focused a television camera on the Earth. In the 19th Century news of the death of Queen Victoria took months to reach all parts of the British Empire, but the death of President Kennedy in 1963 reached almost all of the world's population within 24 hours. Samuel Becker summarized evidence that within thirty minutes of Kennedy's death, 2/3 of of the adults in the United States had heard of the shooting; that four hours later 99.8% of the country was aware of it; and that within twenty-four hours 99% of the people in Athens, Greece, knew it.

Samuel L. Becker, Discovering Mass Communication (Glenview, IL: Scott, Foresman and Company, 1983), p. 412.

There is not only a lot of information in the world today, but it literally travels at the speed of light. The advent and diffusion of new communication technologies have accelerated and changed communication. As Frederick Williams wrote in The New Communications, "Although the whys of human communication remain unchanged, our ways of gathering and exchanging information, instructing our selves and others, entertaining or being entertained, moving others to belief or action, interacting in groups, making decisions, or managing organizations are changing considerably."

Frederick Williams, The New Communications, 3rd ed. (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 1992), p. xiii.

The ubiquitous presence of information affects nations and individuals alike. Wilson Dizard observed,

Heavy infusions of information historically have had a disruptive effect on societies. The current flood of new data, increasing at a rate of about 10 percent annually, is unprecedented in any age. It is unclear how much of this is useful information, contributing to social productivity and maintenance, and how much simply adds a potentially unmanageable physical and psychic burden to what Alvin Toffler (Future Shock) and other analysts characterize as "information overload."

Wilson P. Dizard, Jr., The Coming Information Age, 3rd ed. (NY: Longman, 1989), p. 222.

The problem for students in today's university is that they must not only live and work and survive within this overloaded information environment, but that they are as students pro-actively involved in an information industry. It is the job of universities not only to introduce students to this information, but even more to develop within them the skills and motivations to make even more information and to find out how to use this information wisely and effectively.

There is a huge difference between information and knowledge. Information is all around us, but what is worth knowing? Peter Drucker pointed out in the 1960s that moving information around in business is not enough--there is a difference between informating and communicating. Knowledge is the result of human intellectual activities which evaluate information and give it meaning, transforming it into something useful. Crawford and Gorman make an emphatic point about libraries:

Let us state, as strongly as we can, that libraries are not wholly or even primarily about information. They are about the preservation, dissemination, and use of recorded knowledge in whatever form it may come . . . so that humankind may become more knowledgeable; through knowledge reach understanding; and, as an ultimate goal, achieve wisdom. The collection and absorption of data (discrete facts, numbers, etc.) and information (organizaed data) is often contextless and spasmodic. It may have a utilitarian purpose (usually brief) but has no enduring meaning unless the infomration so acquired is fitted into an intelligible structure of knowledge.

Walt Crawford and Michael Gorman, Future Libraries: Dreams, Madness, and Reality (Chicago: American Library Association, 1995), p. 5.

"Information Competency" is a label that grows out of our attempts to make sense of all this information. The California State University system defined this concept in 1996 in terms of core competencies, each of which is addressed in the materials, examples, and exercises which follow in this website. We help you understand and use information and the technologies of information at all stages of the process, from clarification of your research purpose to asking questions to finding and accessing sources of information, to critically analyzing and using information to reach conclusions, to the process of creating and writing itself. Among the critical things you need to know is how to manage your time and the tasks in research and writing. As you might expect, the things this website is designed to help you learn touch on things that are dealt with and amplified upon in courses across the university.

The following table presents a navagation guide to the interrelated processes of researching and communicating:

Purpose and Decision to Start Rhetorical Need Motivation Planning and management of tasks over time
Problem Question
Generate Information Needs and Questions General orientation to subject Specific topics: events, chronology, people, issues, etc. Identify key concepts and words
Personal	Documents	Library					Internet
Prior knowledge Personal contacts Interviews Observation	Letters Reports Maps Organizational files and records Brochures Newsletters	Books ALIS at Fresno State	Periodicals Indexes and Abstracts InfoTrac	Reference Books Bibliographies Encyclopedias Biographical indexes	Government Documents	On-line Databases	Search tools AltaVista Webcrawler Yahoo Useful websites Libraries Museums Government Commercial Business Scholarly Professional Personal
Access Research Sources Find and read materials Use footnotes & bibliographies for additional leads Revise and refine research question in light of new information
Notes and Records Keep track of sources: build bibliography as you go Take notes: "Direct quotations" Paraphrases Important facts, statistics Your comments in reaction to material Organize as you go
Critically Analyze and Evaluate Information Criteria for evaluating evidence Pertinence to task and audience
Organize and Synthesize Information Synthesizing a thesis Selecting and apportioning developmental materials Ciceronian organization principles: exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, confutatio, and conclusio
Communicating results of research to others
Essays and Research Papers draft, revising, rewriting, and proofreading Scholarly citation styles and formats: MLA, APA, Chicago, Chemistry, Biology Tech: Using Word			Reports Oral reports: Using PowerPoint Written reports: Using Word in association with PowerPoint		Webpages & hyperlink essays Links to HTML instructional sites General guidelines Instructions for creating webpages at Fresno State
Judging the communication product and the process Evaluation of academic work: grading Continuing role of information competencies in getting university education

 

8. Ethics & rules

Understand the ethical, legal, and socio-political issues surrounding information and information technology.

Using and citing sources

Ownership and Intellectual property, including issues of authorship

Information competency literacy: reading, computers, information, culture

Exigency: Need to Know and Communicate

What is the rhetoric need?

Nothing will happen if you’re not motivated to do research and then communicate the results.

Motivation grows out of circumstances, your own needs and interests, the needs of your audience, time, and your information competency.

Management to time and tasks in research and writing

1. Define the research topic.

What do you need to know and do?

Focus on the central problem, issue, or need

SPIRE

Stasis: fact, value, and policy

Consider your "research topic" to be tentative and dynamic as you enter into the process of discovering information.

2. Information requirements needed

Determine the information requirements for the research question, problem, or issue.

Popular vs. scholarly vs. proprietary vs. government information

Primary vs. secondary sources

Information must serve you, your audience, the subject, and the occasion

3. Locate and retrieve relevant information.

Locate and retrieve relevant information

Lecture notes and textbooks

Library resources: books, periodicals, government documents, indexes, bibliographies, reference books

Technical vocabulary: database, record, field

Information Gathering Behaviors: How to do it

Students

Faculty

4. Technological tools

Use the technological tools for accessing information

The Internet and Search engines

Library:

ALIS

Expanded Academic Index

5. Evaluate information.

Critical judgment

Common standards to assess information

• Credibility
• Authoritativeness
• Audience attitude
• Recognizing bias
• Timeliness
• Pertinence and appropriateness to assignment, subject focus, speaker/writer, audience

Information as a commodity

6. Organize and synthesize information.

General considerations and strategies

• Mapping information and structuring
• Adaptation to discipline
• Adaptation to assignment requirements
• Interaction of research and organizing stages

Prewriting

• Use prewriting to explore, discover, and develop ideas
• brainstorm lists
• focused freewriting
• clustering
• thinking

Synthesize a THESIS

• State WHAT you want to say in the essay in a single sentence.
• The central idea of the paper is called a thesis.
• Remember that the thesis should be appropriate to the scope and purpose of the course.

Select and apportion DEVELOPMENTAL points and materials

• Development is the expansion of the thesis, identifying the main lines of development, the major arguments proving your point, and so forth.
• Types of developmental material include definitions, facts, quotations, statistics, comparisons, contrasts, examples, illustrations, and so forth.

Cicero: exordium, narratio, partitio, confirmatio, confutatio, and conclusio

ORGANIZATION PRINCIPLES

• INTRODUCTION
• BODY (Confirmatio)
• CONCLUSION (Conclusio)

INTRODUCTION

• Exordium: Secure attention and interest.
• Narratio: Give needed background on topic (what does reader need to understand to appreciate your point?)
• Partitio: State the purpose of paper and preview the major parts

Partitio

• Orient reader to the thesis or purpose of paper: scholars usually state the thesis directly
  • "The purpose of this paper is to. . . ."
• "Preview" the major developmental parts of the paper: scholars usually state this directly
  • "First, the history of the problem will be explored; second, the consequences. . . ."

BODY (Confirmatio)

• Body of essay contains the main ideas of the essay and appropriate developmental material.
• Arrangement of the main ideas/developmental material should be determined by the subject matter and purpose.

CONCLUSION (Conclusio)

• Summarize thesis and main points
• Show relevance to the course (or reason you wrote essay)
• Stimulate reader to want to know more, do something, think of the implications of your essay, etc.)

TRANSITIONAL MATERIAL

• Throughout essay, thesis should be abundantly clear.
• Relate each main idea to thesis and to other ideas.
• Use transitional words (therefore, however, first, etc.)

Technological tools for organizing & synthesizing

Note cards and pen

Outlines

Thinktank models

Excel

Word

Graphics

7. Communicating Results of Research

Communicate using a variety of information technologies.

Writing:

Essay vs. Report

Technical vs. Persuasive

Paper with MLA, APA, etc.: Using and citing sources

Webpage essay/report

PowerPoint

Writing Stages

Prewriting

Invention and Disposition: finding, selection, and arrangement of materials

Elocution: Putting ideas and information into words: Write the first draft

Revising

• Check spelling.
• Check punctuation.
• Check for word appropriateness (meaning, etc.)
• Check for sentence construction: complete sentences? fragments? dangling sentences? missing verbs? missing words? run-together sentences? subject-verb & pronoun-antecedent agreement errors?
• Check for paragraph adequacy.
• Check for transitions--are there enough? (probably not)
• Check for overall structure, be sure introduction and conclusion are effective
• Check for content: logically sound? points well developed? details sufficient? enough illustrations & examples? support?
• Read essay as you think your reader will.

Rewriting

• Based on your revising, write a new draft of the essay.

Proofreading

• Proofreading of final draft involves the same factors as revision.
• There is no excuse for errors in your papers which you could have caught by proofreading.
• Typing errors are still errors.
• Make changes neatly in ink. Never turn in a paper unless it has been proofread.

If necessary, rewrite again

Repeat revision and rewriting steps until paper meets objectives and rhetorical needs

• Additional research may been needed if new questions arise and/or you find points that need further development as you revise and rewrite

Technological tools to facilitate writing

Word

• Templates
• Outlines
• Headers
• Spell and grammar checking
• MLA, APA, etc. templates for publication style/format

Excel: generating tables and graphs

Graphics: to visually reinforce ideas

10. Judge the product and the process.

Does product meet the essential rhetorical need?

Product: audience, style, tone

Process:

metacognitive

circular and dynamic

Adaptation to discipline

Information Competency Reconsidered

What happens next?