Big Six & Sources (Information Literacy)

Hey, Assalamualaikum...Finally I am back with my third part of blog. For this semester I have chosen Information Literac. First week was really boring and stressful because the schedule is really busy and messy. Lecturer told us the Do's and Donts of class. Lecturer taught us a lot in first week. Started with the introduction of students. That phase was really interesting and enjoying. Ice-breaking session was difficult because for me this subject was new and I have never been taught before. The topics she taught in first semester are:

 Information Literacy: The ability to know when there is a need for information, to be able to identify, locate, evaluate, and effectively use that information for the issue or problem at hand. Although this definition seems to be most commonly used, there are other definitions that are widely recognized as well. For example, another conception defines it in terms of a set of competencies that an informed citizen of an information society ought to possess to participate intelligently and actively in that society or we can say it is a framework of solving problems.

                                                                                                                    INFORMATION LITERACY PROCESS FRAMEWORK:

• Task Defination

Define the problem + Identify info requirements

• Information Seeking Strategies

Determine range sources + Prioritize sources

• Location Access

Locate sources + Find Info

• Use of information

Engage ( read,view, hear, touch) , extract info

• Synthesis

Organize + present

• Evaluation process

Judge the product + Judge the process

Second week was bit interesting. From the start lecturer taught us about primary and secondary sources.

Primary sources: are original materials. Information for which the writer has no personal knowledge is not primary, although it may be used by historians in the absence of a primary source. In the study of history as an academic discipline, a primary source (also called original source orevidence) is an artifact, a document, a recording, or other source of information that was created at the time under study. It serves as an original source of information about the topic. Similar definitions are used in library science, and other areas of scholarship. In journalism, a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person.

Secondary sources: is a document or recording that relates or discusses information originally presented elsewhere. A secondary source contrasts with a primary source which is an original source of the information being discussed; a primary source can be a person with direct knowledge of a situation, or a document created by such a person.

Secondary sources involve generalization, analysis, synthesis, interpretation, or evaluation of the original information. Primary and secondary are relative terms, and some sources may be classified as primary or secondary, depending on how it is used. An even higher level, the tertiary source such as an encyclopedia or dictionary, resembles a secondary source in that it contains analysis, but attempts to provide a broad introductory overview of a topic.

Lecturer also explained about the example of both primary and secondary Sources. She told us about Diaries, journals, autobiographies that it comes under primary sources.

Secondary Sources usually is in the form of published works, journal articles, books, radio and tv documentaries come under Secondary sources.

Tertiary Sources:

• Bibliographies of bibliography
• Directories of directories
• Guides to the literature

Directories come under tertiary example.

Furthermore she taught us about Library, that part was really interesting because we never go to library but that day i actually came to know about the meaning of Library.

I have never come across the services which library provide us, that day I came to know that library is actually for 

• Book lending
• Reading room
• Printing
• Photocopy
• Information search
• Current awareness service
• E-journals
• Multimedia collection

It became more interesting when we learnt about encyclopedia. ENCYCLOPEDIA is something really informative and useful. Information literacy is a really informative subject, moreover I learnt about types of Encyclopedia and Dictionary. As we all used to know about Dictionaries.

Our lecturer also told us some meaningful facts about Glossary, lexicon, thesaurus, vocabulary.

I just remember OPAC (online Public access catalog) was really tough as we can see from the name.

OPAC:

—OPAC is a computerized online catalog of all the materials held in a library and can be searched quickly and efficiently using a computer. At last she taught us about networks.

Networking

Third week started with ma friend's birthday. I really enjoyed his birthday although It disturbed my study schedule a bit but I enjoyed overall. Lecturer taught us about Library catalogues. She told us that the information retrieval system circulates between Library Catalogue, data bases and internet.
She told us about Library catalogue that Library Catalogues are of two types :

• A Library Card Catalogue
• OPAC

OPAC: Online Public Access Catalogue

An Online Public Access Catalog (often abbreviated as OPAC or simply Library Catalog) is an online database of materials held by a library or group of libraries. Users search a library catalogue principally to locate books and other material physically located at a library  example if we want to log on to Aiu Library's OPAC then we should go to http://www.italic.aiu.edu.my and we can easliy visit the Aiu's OPAC main page then.

  She also taught us the advatages and benefits of using OPAC like the OPAC provides us with details about the books, audiovisuals, and other materials that can be found in our library. One good reason is that libraries throughout the world use a similar system. It is also easy to locate books and Library stuff by using OPAC.

WHAT WE CAN FIND IN OPAC :

• Record for all the book, audiovisual and periodicals
• Location of the items
• Availability
• overdue of item
• Format of resource

In the next class she taught how to login to italic and how we can take benefits from OPAC.
OPAC of some other Universties.