INFO 5745, Core Assignments Evaluating Organization of Digital Information
The purpose of these assignments was to evaluate how information was organized on a variety of websites, and, in some cases, to research and suggest improvements to the organization. The below PDFs were turned in as Word docs on June 28, July 12, and July 24, 2021.
- Assignment One: Website Analysis
- Assignment Two: Benchmarking Exercise and Card Sort Analysis
- Assignment Three: Reorganization of Website
These assignments gave our class the chance to learn and apply various principles of information organization on websites before having to suggest our own site architecture for an existing website as our final project (see Competency 4 for the project). All three of the above assignments had us consider the organizational and labeling systems used for the information on the website, as well as how the information was discovered through navigation and site searches. Assignment One was a deep dive into all four systems: organization, labeling, navigation and search. Assignment Two had us consider user needs and compare (benchmark) competing websites, then do a card sort analysis to practice gathering user feedback on the organization of information. Assignment Three was a quick analysis of the organization and labeling used on a website, followed by our own suggestions for reorganizing the site’s information.
While the information organized here is digital rather than physical objects, the concepts still apply to two of the three competences: the principles for the organization and representation of information (3A), and the skills needed to organize such information (3B).
INFO 5200, Information Organization Project
The purpose of this enormous project was to learn and apply the principles of information organization to a hypothetical collection. It was created in four sections over the entire semester; the 40-page Word doc was turned in on April 26, 2020.
Throughout the entire semester, this course would introduce concepts in our readings and lectures that were applied in the project. The project allowed us to focus on a subject that interested us, since we would be working on it for four months, and topic knowledge would be beneficial as we built certain sections. I chose to create a collection of books about Tudor history, specifically during the reigns of Henry VIII and his three children. While contemplating how to organize these resources, I had to consider where the collection would reside; the users’ demographics and knowledge, as well as how they would ask for the resources; and the representation of the resources, including entity level, metadata elements and semantics, the ideal record structure and specifications, and the content and input rules.
Then we started comparing these ideals to a sample software, LiBib. This led to discussions of access and authority control, as well as the representation of information content within the database, including subject access, which required the creation of a thesaurus for our subject headers, and name authority control (and a related Name Authority file). And we had to create a classification system to allow both for the organization of the collection in a physical space and collocation of similar resources.
Finally, we evaluated our system using a SWOT analysis, considered how to improve the database to enable better searches for resources, and reflected on what we had learned from the entire project. It was easily the most pragmatic assignment I have had so far in grad school.
This project directly correlates to all of the competences listed in ALA’s list for the organization of recorded knowledge and information: 3A (principles involved in the organization and representation of recorded knowledge and information), 3B (developmental, descriptive, and evaluative skills needed to organize recorded knowledge and information resources), and 3C (systems of cataloging, metadata, indexing, and classification standards and methods used to organize recorded knowledge and information).
INFO 5200, Concept Briefing
The purpose of this assignment was to explore concepts related to the organization of information. A Word doc containing my briefing on the concept of collocation was turned in on February 12, 2020.
Collocation is a key component of doing research and finding resources. I was fortunate to have completed this assignment early in the semester while considering how to construct my theoretical collection. The concepts I researched for the briefing came back to me while I wrote several sections of my IOP (above), as I determined how to classify and construct not only the Call Numbers and physical organization on the collection’s shelves, but also the virtual organization of the collection within the software used for the project.
This concept briefing directly correlates to ALA’s core competence 3A, the principles involved in the organization and representation of recorded knowledge and information.