Information resource - what is it? Use of information resources

Information can come from virtually anywhere - media, blogs, personal experience, books, magazines and newspaper articles, expert opinions, encyclopedias and even entertainment sites. Each of these sources can be defined as an information resource.

What is information? This is information that we are trying to get as an answer to our questions. The source of the answer will vary depending on what question we asked. The use of information resources is now more and more being transferred to the Internet, which is quite natural. What sources of information are used most often?

Journal

The magazine is a collection of articles and images on various popular topics, as well as displays of current events. As a rule, these articles are written by journalists or scientists and are aimed at the average adult person. What can journals be used for?

• To find information or opinions about a popular culture;
• To find the latest up-to-date information about current events;
• Read general articles for people who are not necessarily specialists on this topic.

Magazines can cover very serious material and have a narrow specialization. Despite the fact that access to this type of information resource is open to everyone, they are often of interest only to a particular group of people. Such a journal is a collection of articles written, as a rule, by scientists in academic or professional fields. The editorial board reviews articles to decide whether they should be accepted. Articles in journals can cover very specific topics or narrow areas of research. Such an information resource (which is a narrow sphere of activity, does not need explanation) can be used:

• When performing scientific research;
• To find out what was learned on a particular topic;
• To find sources that point to other relevant studies on this topic.

Database

The database contains quotes from articles in magazines and newspapers. They can also contain links to podcasts, blogs, videos and other types of media. Some databases contain abstracts or brief summaries of articles, while others contain full texts. At present they look like electronic information resources and can be used to search both general information and highly specialized ones.

Newspapers

The newspaper is a collection of articles on current events, usually published daily. Since they are issued at least one in each city, this is an excellent local information resource. What is the newspaper as a source of information? So, it helps:

• To find up-to-date information on international, national and local events;
• Find editorial articles, comments, expert or popular opinions.

Catalogs

Catalogs are organized information systems and resources, in which each element has a name and can be found by an ordered list of names. The catalog will indicate the location of a particular source or group of sources for your topic. They can help:

• Find out what sources the library or website owns on your topic (today electronic libraries prevail, therefore, catalogs these days are information resources of the Internet);
• Find where the particular item is in the library.

Books

Books cover almost any topic and can be both scientific and artistic. For research purposes, you will probably need books that synthesize all the information on one topic (to support a particular argument or dissertation). In addition, books are the most common educational information resources both online and offline. They are necessary:

• When searching for a large amount of information on one topic;
• To compare a specific topic in context with other important issues;
• Search for historical information;
• Search for various summaries and research results.

Encyclopedia

Encyclopedias are collections of short actual records, often written by different participants who are well versed in a particular topic.

There are two types of encyclopedias: general and thematic. General reference books provide brief overviews on a wide range of topics. Subject encyclopedias contain in-depth elements of focusing in one area of research. They are used:

• When searching for background information on a topic;
• When trying to find key ideas, important dates or concepts.

Web sites

The system allows you to access most types of information on the Internet through a browser. One of the main features of the network is the ability to quickly contact another source of relevant information. The web system contains information in other formats, in addition to plain text, including sounds, images and video. Thus, sites, like information resources of the Internet, can have a variety of forms and are needed to:

• Find the actual information;
• Get information about a specific object;
• To study expert and popular opinions on different topics;
• To do hobbies and find personal interests.

So, you can notice that information and information resources are used most often on the Internet these days. The reason for this is the development of the World Wide Web, but has it been so before?

History of the development of Internet resources

The concept of the information resource on the network has evolved during the history of Web search, beginning with the early concept of static addressable documents or files. At present, this concept covers a specific source that can be identified, having a name and address on the Internet or in any network system.

Information resource - what did this concept mean at the beginning of the development of the Network?

At the beginning of the development of the site specification (1990-1994), such a definition did not yet exist. Sites were downloaded on the Web as more or less static addressable objects, mainly in the form of files and documents associated with the use of uniform location facilities (URLs). A web resource is implicitly defined as something that can be identified. Identification was carried out in two ways: by assigning names and addresses, the latter being dependent only on the protocol. At that time, the appearance of the object in the URI, URL and URN was not yet perceived as an information resource in the modern form.

With the development of Internet technologies by the end of 1990, the information resource in the network was called everything that has identity. This concept included an electronic document, an image, a service (for example, an online weather forecast), as well as a system of other sources. Thus, a resource can remain constant even if its content changes over time, provided that the conceptual mapping does not change in the process.

RDF format

First released in 1999, RDF was designed to describe resources, in other words, a means of combining resource metadata in a standard way. The description of the RDF resource is a set of triples (subject, predicate, object) where the subject represents the resource that should be described, ie the predicate is the type of property related to that resource and the object is a data group or resource topic .

The predicate itself is considered as a resource and is identified by a URI. Therefore, properties such as "title" and "author" are represented in RDF as resources that can be used recursively (as a subject of other triples). Based on this principle, such RDF dictionaries as RDFS, OWL and SKOS will accumulate definitions of abstract resources - their classes, properties, concepts, etc., that were defined in the URI.

RDF also points to the definition of anonymous resources or empty nodes that are not mapped to the URI.

Using the HTTP URI

URLs, in particular HTTP URIs, are often used to identify abstract information resources. Since such URIs are associated with the HTTP protocol, the question arose about which type of authentication should be obtained for such resources through this protocol using a web browser and whether the syntax of the URI itself can help differentiate between "abstract" and "information" resources? The URI specifications do not give any answer to this question. It was suggested that the HTTP URI is responsible for identifying the resource in the original sense - for example, a file, a document, or any kind of a so-called information resource must have a keyword in its name.

How is information generated for sources?

Educational information resources (and many others too) operate on information external or internal.

External information is data that has been received outside of an object and is of a general, global nature. Such information can often be incomplete and contradictory. As an example, you can provide information on the state of the market, on competition in various business areas, on various sales techniques and so on.

External information can be obtained from sources such as:

• Mass media - magazines on certain topics, websites, newspapers and the like.
• Specialized information on a specific topic - for example, economic information about exchange rates and the state of the foreign exchange market on the Central Bank's website.
• Specific information - today for its receipt use the Internet search engines or various catalogs.
• Information from government agencies - legislation and the like.

Internal information is the data formed within an organization or an object. This can include, for example, information about the availability of funds and resources in an organization. Another example of such data can serve as a different kind of internal statistics and calculations.