Page 67 - DLIS006_INFORMATION SOURCES AND SERVICES

Information Sources and Services

Notes 4.1.2 Concept of Information Service

A very simple definition is an Information Service is a service, which provides (serves) data/
knowledge/information somehow. However, this definition is not strong enough to describe
the range and domain of an Information Service. Therefore, it is necessary to define the term
Information Service in a specific context. Fortunately, Wikipedia delivers, or better saying
serves, a good definition of this context, which is called Information System.
An Information System is any combination of information technology and people‘s activities
using that technology to support operations, management, and decision-making.

The definition continues with explaining the term from a bit more technical view:
In a very broad sense, the term Information System is frequently used to refer to the interaction
between people, algorithmic processes, data and technology.

Regarding the first part of this definition, an Information Service is an instance of Information
Technology. Hence, an Information Service is a part of an Information System. The second role
in this definition is people. This term must be substituted by the term agent, which could be an
administrator and/or a user. A user could be a customer and/or contributor. In addition, an
agent could be a human or a machine. The interaction is that an Information Service, which
collects (retrieves), manages (structures) and stores the data/knowledge/information, serves
this data/knowledge/information to an user.
The outcome of this is the following definition:
An Information Service is this part of an Information System that serves data/knowledge/
information to customers and collects it from its contributors, to manage and store it by optionally
using administrators.

The basic objective of a library is collection, organization, storage, analysis and dissemination
of information. Dissemination of information is being done in some way. This means of
dissemination of information may be called a service. Reference services, CAS, SDI, literature
search, database search, document delivery and translation service are some of the important
information services in a library.
There are two aspects of information service such as:
Provision of Information on Demand: When a user needs the information. He/she
approaches the reference/information desk and requests for information by means of a
specific query. He would be provided an answer to his specific query on demand.

Provision of Information in Anticipation: This aspect aims to keep the users well informed
and up-to-date in their field of specialization and also in the related subjects. This is called
as dissemination of information or what we frequently use ‘current awareness service’
(CAS). This is a very important feature of information service. It is certainly a special
feature of special libraries or information/documentation .centres. However this aspect,
of information service will not be completely missing in other kinds of libraries, though.
It might get less attention.

4.1.3 Types of Information

The mission of research is to find solutions to problems for which information is required. This
may be obtained either from the accumulated store of information or one may look to the
flowed communication–either directly from primary information sources or through secondary
source of information–with the available informational resources. Whatever may be the situation;
there are certain types of information which have been identified by Hertz and Rubenstein as:

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