INFORMATION SYSTEM & ITS SOURCES

1.      Defining Need

Decisions are required to be taken in a day to day life. No single task in our life can be done without decision making. For every assignment we undertake, there has to be a process of making choices. Whenever we are faced with choices, there is an inevitable need for selecting one particular course of action. Any task can be done in various ways, but doing it simultaneously through all possible alternatives is virtually impossible. This necessitates making a reasonable choice from all the options available.

An example can be taken for a person who wants to go to a City. He can look at the following options.

1.       Use any of the local bus service available

2.       Go by train

3.       Travel by air

As you can see, the decision to be made in this situation is faced with the availability of a set of combinations of alternatives.

• Every decision we take in daily life requires some sort of information about the alternatives available. For instance, in the above example, certain factors need to be considered before making a decision.

1.       How urgent it is to reach to that City

2.       How much time is available to accommodate traveling, since each mode of traveling will take different time to reach the same destination?

3.       Whether bookings are available for the desired day and time.

4.       Is there any possibility of cancellation of booking or flight or bus service?

5.       Which bus service or airline to choose from since various airlines and bus services are having traveling facilities to that City.

• Without the availability of relevant information, we may take a decision that is wrong or not to our benefit. For instance, if the person does not have complete knowledge of facts he might not be able to take the right decision.

2.     Sources of Information

Sources of information are generally categorized as primary, secondary or tertiary depending on their originality and their proximity to the source or origin. For example, initially, findings might be communicated informally by email and then presented at meetings before being formally published as a primary source. Once published, they will then be indexed in a bibliographic database, and repackaged and commented upon by others in secondary sources.

The designations of primary, secondary and tertiary differ between disciplines or subjects, particularly between what can generally be defined as the sciences and the humanities.
 For example,                         
          The historian’s primary sources are the poems, stories, and films of the era under study.                        
 The research scientist's primary sources are the results of laboratory tests and the medical 

records of patients treated with the drug.

Written information can be divided into several types.

1.       Primary Sources

    2.       Secondary Sources

3.       Tertiary Sources

Primary Sources

“Primary sources are original materials on which other research is based”

Some examples of primary sources:

1. Scientific journal articles reporting experimental research results from
2. Proceedings of Meetings, Conferences.                                                                                             

3. Technical reports                                                                                                     

4. Dissertations or theses (may also be secondary) 5.Patents                                                                       

6. Sets of data, such as census statistics  
7. Works of literature (such as poems and fiction)  

8. Diaries 

9. Autobiographies 

10. Interviews, surveys and fieldwork 11. Letters and correspondence 

12. Speeches 

13. Newspaper articles (may also be secondary)                                                                                                     

14. Government documents                                                                                       

15. Photographs and works of art 

16. Original documents (such as a birth certificate or trial transcripts)  

17. Internet communications on email, and newsgroups

Secondary Sources

Secondary sources are less easily defined than primary sources. What some define as a secondary source, others define as a tertiary source. Nor is it always easy to distinguish primary from secondary sources
                             

Some examples of secondary sources:   
                                                                                 

1. bibliographies (may also be tertiary) 

2. Biographical works                                                                                                                    

3.Commentaries                                                                                                                                   

4. Dictionaries and encyclopedias (may also be tertiary)

5. Dissertations or theses (more usually primary) 

6. Handbooks and data compilations (may also be tertiary) 

7. History                                                                                                                                           

8. Indexing and abstracting tools used to locate primary & secondary sources (may also be tertiary) 

9. Journal articles, particularly in disciplines other than science (may also be primary)                                                        

10. Newspaper and popular magazine articles (may also be primary)    

11. Review articles and literature reviews                                     

12. Textbooks (may also be tertiary)

Tertiary Sources 

This is the most problematic category of all. Some Definitions of Tertiary Sources:

1. Works that list primary and secondary resources in a specific subject area   

2. Materials in which the information from secondary sources has been "digested" - reformatted and condensed, to put it into a convenient, easy-to-read form. 

3. Sources which are once removed in time from secondary sources

Some examples of tertiary sources: 

 1. Almanacs and fact book 

 2. Bibliographies (may also be secondary)                                               

 3. Chronologies  

 4. Dictionaries and encyclopedias (may also be secondary)                                                                     5. Directories     

 6. Guidebooks, manuals, etc.     

 7. Handbooks and data compilations (may also be secondary)   

 8. Indexing and abstracting tools used to locate primary & secondary sources (may also be secondary)                                                                                                                                                 9. Textbooks (may also be secondary)