Classification of information sources

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Our world today is highly globalized, and that is why information is increasingly important. A few years ago the information was very limited, since there were very few sources of information and almost all of them came from a nearby environment. With the arrival of new technologies, the number of information generators has increased, emerging new types of sources. To know the ways in which these are divided, in this lesson from a TEACHER we are going to talk about the classification of information sources.

Index

1. What are the sources of information?
2. Information sources according to the medium
3. Information sources according to the level of information
4. According to the specialization

The sources of information are all those evidence from which information arises and that can be represented in a variety of ways. Many of these information sources are also capable of changing from one medium to another, being much more versatile.

Information sources have many uses, but the most important is that of the search for knowledge. Thanks to these sources, both the smallest and the oldest can increase their knowledge and intelligence. Although this information can also be used to investigate, and as a result of this, achieve an evolution of the original sources of information, thereby achieving that society can advance and evolve.

The sources of information should serve to save the information so that it never disappears, but it should also serve to transmit it. Therefore, it should not be protected too much, because it is important to maintain it, but it is also very important that it reaches other people.

It should be taken into account that within the types of information sources there are different specialties, depending on what that information is for. The sources of information for journalists are not the same as for academics.

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To continue this lesson on classifying information sources, we need to talk about the different kinds of information sources. There is no single class of classification, so we must talk about the different ways in which they are classified, depending on factors such as the medium or the theme.

The first type of classification that we must talk about is the types of information sources depending on the support, that is, the means by which this data is obtained and transmitted. The types of information sources have evolved by the new technologies creating with it supports and being some of these types the following:

• Paper: The written sources that we find in the papers, being able to touch them since they are in physical format. The greatest example is books or any document with some years.
• Electronic: The arrival of new technologies has made many people prefer the electronic format, which is much cheaper and uses less paper. An example of this is the increasing digitization of documents in many areas. Examples are items on usb or cd.
• On-line: Information sources can also be consulted online or online. The most common are the ones we find on different web pages.

Other valid classification

Within the support category we can also find another type of classification, being the one that refers to the type of physical support in which the information sources appear, although they also serve to know the origin of these documents. The types of this classification are the following:

• Writings: The typical written papers among which we can find books or old documents.
• Graphics: Data and statistics tables in which we can find informative numerical values.
• Iconographic: Documents made up of some type of image such as paintings, photographs or illustrations.
• Cartographic: Maps belong to this type of information source.
• Materials: The rest of material sources of information, such as a building or personal objects.
• Oral: A type of non-material support information, such as interviews or speeches. They can be direct or indirect, such as recordings.

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According to the level of information, the sources of information can be divided by how we received the message, if it is first-hand, or has gone through others before reaching us. This type of classification is very important to see if it is reliable or not, since primary sources are much more reliable than secondary sources, being first-hand.

The kinds of information sources according to this are the following:

• Primary: It is the information that we receive first-hand, that is, directly from the author or seeing it at the time it happens. An example would be books created by the same author who wrote it.
• High schools: They are those sources that come from the primary ones, such as summaries of them or analysis of these sources.
• Tertiary: It is a selection of different primary and secondary sources. Some examples are encyclopedias or educational books.

Information sources can be divided depending on the level of specialization of the data, being able to be more generic or more focused on specialization. The classes of information sources according to this type are the following:

• General: They are the ones that give generic information, which is useful for any type of person.
• Specials: They are those that give information essentially on a topic, serving that particular topic, but for no other topic.
• Multidiscipline: The sources of information of this class are all those that unite information from different disciplines, being more specialized than the general ones, but serving various topics.

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