Components of Information System

Components of Information System

i) Libraries

ii) Documentation Centres

iii) Information Centres

iv) Data Banks

v) Data Centres

vi) Information Analysis Centres

vii) Referral Centres

viii) Clearing  Houses

ix) Translation Centres, etc.

Libraries are established by the government, academic institutions or by some other special organizations. Libraries can be grouped into three major divisions i.e Public (State Central Library, District Library, Sub divisional Library, Rural Library), Academic (University Library, College Library), School and Special (Libraries attached to industries, Doordarshan Kendra, All India Radio, etc).

The change in structure of libraries comes as an information system that consists of a number of organs or components. These organs or components work in harmony to achieve the define purposes. It is advantageous to discuss the changing role of library and information centers on the basis of such information unit or change in structure of the libraries.

- To answer the queries;

- To help in finding the primary document;

- To identify as accurately as possible all information of potential interest to users;

- To see that the user receive the information.

3. Information Centres: An information centre can be defined as “an organization that

a) Select, acquire stores and retrieve specific information in response to requests.

b) Announces, abstract, extract and indexes information and

c) Disseminate information in response to requests from documents or in anticipation”.

Meltzer defines the information centre as “The Special library with added functions of analyzing and synthesizing information needed by management, staff and the technical personnel of the organization”. Thus information centres gives emphasis towards the provision of information contained in the document rather than document themselves which is the main consideration of traditional libraries.

A library handles and provides address of a document containing information but an information centre gives information that is inside the document and also processes and disseminates it. The information centre differs from the library in following main areas

i) Degree of delegation by the user i.e. the task of searching and evaluating information is dome by the staff

ii) Exercise of judgment and evaluation as to the importance of the retrieved material in relation to the client’s request

iii) The giving of information itself rather than document.

iv) The processing of search input into a variety of search products

v) Provides information to not only user of parent organization but also outside the organization too.

vi) Not only acquire, process, store and retrieve information (the library function) but also reduce analyse and present information / data.

Satmana defines a data bank as an open information system with sets of data known as files. It is composed of the following elements

i) The basic files known as data base.

ii) A filing system that makes to integrate data from different files, relative to the same entities

iii) A data processing system that allows users to extract relevant information from the files adopted to their needs and in a form suited to their decision pattern.

Data centre and data banks are dissimilar only regarding the subjects they deals and type of data they handle. Simply stated data centres handle only numerical data and mostly for science and technology. Data banks are multidisciplinary and deal with all types of data particularly administrative, statistical, techno-economics, census and survey, and similar other that are produced by several institutions. Data banks handle data only while data centres handle data themselves or literature about data.

i) Data Collection

ii) Data Control

iii) Data Codification

iv) Data Organization ans structuring into a database

v) Data Retrieval

Example of data centre include National Data Centre for Crystallography, University of Madras, India.

6. Information Analysis Centres: The COSATI standing panel wrote the following comprehensive definition of Information Analysis Centre (IAC) “An information analysis centre is a formally structured organizational unit, specifically (but not necessarily exclusively) established for the purpose of acquiring, selecting, storing, retrieving, evaluating, analyzing an synthesizing a body of information and / or data in a clearly defined specialized field or pertaining to a specified mission with intent of compiling, digesting, repackaging or otherwise organizing and presenting pertinent information and / or data in a form most authoritative, timely and useful to a society of peers and management”.

The key activities of IAC s are analysis, interpretation, synthesis, evaluation and repackaging of information carried out by subject specialists, resulting in the production of new, evaluated information in the form of critical reviews, state of art, monographs or data compilation as well as substantive, evaluated responses to queries for the purpose of assisting a community of users more broadly representative than the staff of the parent institutes of laboratories.

These centres have to closely monitor the literature produced in the field, evaluate the utility of each piece of information so gathered and the information are communicate to the users in a directly usable form. The results of analysis are communicated either through a regular publication or by way of sporadic reports. It is very much essential that these centres should verify the information so gathered with regard to the validity, reliability and accuracy before dissemination.

7. Referral Centres: These do not provide the user with the documents. Instead it refers or directs them to the source from where they can get the data or the documents. Mostly to secondary publication, information centres, professional organizations, research institutions, clearing houses and individual scientist, etc. They maintain files of sources, directories, etc. The referral centre may even bring out such documents. So, in simple referral centre provide switching mechanism among different types of information institutions. The referral service may be one of the activities of a documentation centre and it is difficult to find units performing this function exclusively. To achieve its objectives a referral centre has to perform certain basic operations. These includes

i) A referral centre possesses an inventory of all significant information resources in different disciplines.

ii) It compiles and publishes directories of scientific and technical information resources.

iii) It analyzes the operating relationships that exist in the scientific information.

The function of referral centres includes

i) Collect information about information sources within the range of scope of either the subject or activity of the referral centre.

ii) Prepares comprehensive inventory of types of information services available from these sources with a detailed subject index to facilitate access.

iii) Functions as an intermediary between inquirers and the organization or individuals who possess specialized information of the subject of enquiry;

iv) Guides users to appropriate sources where from the required information may be obtaining.

The Examples of referral center includes

a) British Library Lending Division (BLLD), UK.

b) National Referral Centre, Library of Congress.

Clearing houses provide a single point of access to documents originating from a number of sources from different places, in different languages. The producers of the documents inform the clearing house about the bibliographical details of the document and usually send them a copy. The clearing houses circulate the description of the documents to the organization that are interested in the field and to the participating organizations. They may provide a copy of these documents as well on request if available. These units are organized either on a cooperative basis or by an international or national agency.

Most of the clearing houses have specialized as well as they developed collections. They have information gathering network to acquire documents in their subject areas. They also provide specialized information services in some selected areas. They answer specific and general type of questions and may act as central searching places for enquiry especially for research and development areas.

            The difference between a documentation center and a clearing house is that the documentation centre deals with conventional documents, whereas the clearing house deals with the non-conventional documents like conference proceedings, scientific reports, document of limited circulation, etc.

a) National Translation Centre, Chicago, America

b) International Translation Centre, Delft, Netherlands

c) British Library Lending Division, Boston