Lesson 1

The Reading Module

Read the text:

Information science is a discipline that deals with the processes of storing and transferring information. It attempts to bring together concepts and methods from such varied disciplines as library science, computer science and engineering, linguistics, and psychology to develop techniques and devices to aid in the handling of information. In its early stages in the 1960s, information science was concerned primarily with applying the then-new computer technology to the processing and managing of documents. The applied computer technologies and theoretical studies of information science have since permeated many other disciplines. Computer science and engineering still tend to absorb its theory- and technology-oriented subjects, and management science tends to absorb information-systems subjects.

Computer science is the study of computers, their design, and their uses for computation, data processing, and systems control, including design and development of computer hardware and software, and programming. The field encompasses theory, mathematical activities such as design and analysis of algorithms, performance studies of systems and their components, and estimation of reliability and availability of systems by probabilistic techniques. Because computer systems are often too large and complicated for failure or success of a design to be predicted without testing, experimentation is built into the development cycle.

Information processing is the acquisition, recording, organization, retrieval, display, and dissemination of information. Today the term usually refers to computer-based operations. Information processing consists of locating and capturing information, using software to manipulate it into a desired form, and outputting the data. An Internet search engine is an example of an information-processing tool, as is any sophisticated information-retrieval system.

Data processing is manipulation of data by a computer. It includes the conversion of raw data to machine-readable form, flow of data through the CPU and memory to output devices, and formatting or transformation of output. Any use of computers to perform defined operations on data can be included under data processing. In the commercial world, data processing refers to the processing of data required to run organizations and businesses.

Information retreival is recovery of information, especially in a database stored in a computer.Two main approaches are matching words in the query against the database index (keyword searching) and traversing the database using hypertext or hypermedia links. Keyword searching has been the dominant approach to text retrieval since the early 1960s; hypertext has so far been confined largely to personal or corporate information-retrieval applications. Evolving information-retrieval techniques, exemplified by developments with modern Internet search engines, combine natural language, hyperlinks, and keyword searching. Other techniques that seek higher levels of retrieval precision are studied by researchers involved with artificial intelligence.

After text activity