Avoid the information overload

Today, information is power and how you process it can determine your success. Photo: Thinkstock

We live in the information age. We’re all bombarded by tens of thousands of information bits in some form or the other every day. But what should you pay attention to, what should you hold on to and what should you ignore? Today, information is power and how you process it can determine your success. Here is some advice 

1 Balance is important in life: The world around us is full of choices and opportunities. Don’t restrict yourself to any one particular activity or area. It’s good to seek information, but there is more to life than that.

2 Conceptualise information: Becoming a sponge and just absorbing everything around you can at times be ineffective and draining. Instead, focus on understanding and consolidating your concepts.

3 Prioritise your work: There’s far too much to read and know, but everything isn’t equally important. It’s a good idea to keep your long-term goals in sight.

Prioritise!

4 Be organised: It’s good to be curious and more often than not you’re likely to seek information that won’t be found in your textbooks. While it’s good to branch out, don’t get carried away. Organise your hours well. Give more time to information that is more important and relevant to your goals.

5 Do not over-indulge: Thanks to television and the internet, there’s now a never-ending stream of information always available. But it’s very easy to get lost in this web of content. Maintain a sense of equanimity and don’t over-indulge.

6 Become a doer: Seeking information just for the sake of it is not enough. Instead, develop the ability to apply it practically. Utilise your knowledge in your day-to-day activities.

7 Take expert opinion: All sources of information aren’t reliable, especially since the advent of the internet. It’s best to go to the source; talk to the experts in the field.

8 Learn to filter: All information isn’t important, accurate or worthwhile. Prioritise and learn to filter information based on your needs, interests and authenticity of the source.

9 Put it into perspective: It’s not always easy to make sense of all that you see or hear. Share what you have gathered with others, be it teachers, family or peers.

It might make things clearer and offer you a better perspective of looking at things.

The author is director, Mental Health and Behavioural Sciences, Fortis Healthcare

Courtesy: http://www.hindustantimes.com/HTEducation/Chunk-HT-UI-HTEducationSectionPage-OtherStories/Avoid-the-information-overload/SP-Article1-894805.aspx

What about data?

Data is a buzzword today but it can mean many different things, writes Michael Clarke

There is a lot of excitement about data at the moment in STM publishing but when people talk about it they can mean many different things.

First and foremost there is research data itself. A lot of discussion is currently underway to make research data more accessible and to make sure it is properly archived. There is a need for more data repositories that can handle the diverse array of researcher data and maintain it over time.

There are some interesting data archives springing up that are very specialised. The geneticists are way out in front on this with Flybase and Wormbase and the like. But the notion is spreading. Archaeologists recently launched one called tDAR. DataONE is under development to archive ecological and environmental data. Dryad is providing archiving of data underlying peer-reviewed articles in the basic and applied biosciences. Given the myriad data repositories, a lot of work is being done on making these data sets linked and interoperable so they can be interrogated and mined. This is one of the goals for the semantic web championed by Tim Berners-Lee and others.

Second there is there is the publishing of research data – or of linking to it from journal articles. There are questions here about what is appropriate to publish and what sort of demand you can place on peer reviewers. Publishing supplementary data is becoming more and more common, however, and as more and more data is being generated. I was glad to see NISO get involved recently and begin to recommend some standards around this.

Third you have publication metrics. There is a lot of experimentation today around article-level metrics and alternatives to the impact factor, or altmetrics. These include looking at citations to articles independent of the journal they appear in. This makes a lot of sense as, even in the best journals, there are some duds. Similarly, in the second- and third-tier journals there are some gems. Public Library of Science (PLoS), with its open-access mega journal PLoS ONE is a particular champion of article-level metrics as one way to help user navigate through the wealth of content published in the title. 

PLoS is also experimenting with a number of altmetrics that, at the moment, are of questionable value. For example, usage and coverage in social media probably tells us more about the size of the author’s research field and his or her ability to network than they do about the underlying science. The number of people who have bookmarked a paper in Mendeley is interesting but again biases towards large fields (and, of course, to the subset of scientists that use Mendeley). But still, the experimentation is interesting and welcome despite its limitations.

A fourth kind of data is usage data and some really interesting things are happening around the intersection of semantic metadata (really metadata of all kinds) and usage data. Publishers are beginning to cross-tabulate usage data with data about content to ask interesting questions. What kinds of content are different user groups interacting with? When members of a user group begin to look at a certain paper or set of papers outside their field, is that a signal of an interdisciplinary breakthrough? Are there ways to leverage these dynamic communities of interest to help readers find information more efficiently and to find information of relevance that they might have missed? And, of course, publishers are exploring how they can build on this information to generate revenue via product upsells and targeted advertising.

This is the kind of user interaction that Amazon and others have been using for a long time and but is just starting to make inroads in STM. In some ways it is more interesting in STM than in consumer sectors because of the vast quantity of information; the goal is not simply to sell more saucepans to people that bought the ‘Joy of Cooking’ but rather to better understand how very smart people are using very complex information.

Michael Clarke is executive vice president for product and market development at Silverchair Information Systems. Look out for more of his thoughts in the interview in the June/July 2012 issue of Research Information magazine

For more Info: http://www.researchinformation.info/news/news_story.php?news_id=948

The art of managing information - K. Lakshmi

    

Career opportunities for librarians have increased manifold in this digital era.

OPPORTUNITIES GALORE: Librarians need to keep themselves abreast of the latest technology to facilitate quick retrieval of information.

Libraries have come a long way from being mere storehouses of books and periodicals. And the work profile of librarians has also undergone a tremendous change.
According to librarians in the government sector, only a few chose library for a career a few decades ago and most of them were based in the public sector. Now, the number of libraries and the scope of the career have increased manifold.
Officials of the Public Libraries department said a degree or postgraduate degree in library science is a must to take up job as a government librarian. Knowledge in computer science has also become a necessity to keep up with the emerging trend of digitisation. Many universities offer library science courses in distance education mode and regular stream. A. Amudavalli, professor and head, Department of Library and Information Science, University of Madras, said it is a misconception that such courses are now being offered only through distance education. The regular college students have better opportunities than the students of distance education mode.
Various courses
The Department established in 1937 offered certificate and diploma courses. Over time, undergraduate and postgraduate courses were merged together as a two-year Integrated Course in Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS). Later, the course was renamed M.Sc. in Library and Information Science as a full-time (regular) programme, she said.
As the data is not limited to books anymore, the scope for careers in different fields has widened. Besides opportunities in traditional libraries, including those at schools and colleges, candidates could get placement in government department libraries and private sector libraries such as in IT firms and hospitals.
“We constantly update the curriculum with new topics based on the current trends. The students are exposed to latest concepts such as digital libraries, computer applications and soft skills. This provides required competence for employability in various fields,” she said. As the new courses train students in management information system, they could also apply for jobs in banks for record and data management. Another important aspect of the curriculum is the one-month internship training at various major libraries.
Career scope
Most institutions, including non-governmental organisations, research and development labs, defence organisations and media houses, now have library equipped with latest technology and need qualified candidates.
The department is also introducing P.G. Diploma in Digital Library Management in the coming academic year.
Students would learn about digital data preservation, management and retrieval through this evening college programme.