Back to: Types of Information

What is INFORMATION?

Definition from the Oxford English Dictionary

OF. enformacion, informacion (mod.F. information), ad. L. inform ti n-em outline, concept, idea, in med.Schol.L. the action of ‘informing’ matter, n. of action from inform re to INFORM.

3. Knowledge communicated concerning some particular fact, subject, or event; that of which one is apprised or told; intelligence, news. spec. contrasted with data

Therefore, for something to be information, there must be communication and/or informing. Information is based on a social action.

• First, there must be knowledge
• Second, someone must want to share this knowledge
• Third, someone must want to receive this knowledge
• Fourth, this knowledge must be shared correctly

Is Information Important?

One of the American "founding fathers" thought so:

"A popular Government [i.e. a government of the people] without popular information or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy or perhaps both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance, and a people who mean to be their own Governors, must arm themselves with the power knowledge gives."

James Madison. Letter to W.T. Barry, August 4, 1822

Madison understood very well that knowledge and power go together. He was a staunch believer that the people should rule themselves through a republic (or democracy), and if the people are to make decent decisions, they must have adequate information. In other words, people who do not have information cannot govern themselves.

Where is Information Kept?

Types of materials: Texts Sound Recordings Still Images Moving Images Maps Music Prints Manuscripts Realia etc.

Types of materials can be in different formats: Clay tablets Bark on trees Parchment Movie film Wax recordings Paper etc. Adobe Photoshop Microsoft Word Web Pages QuickTime Real Media Autocad (Maps) GIF Images JPEG Images PNG Images etc.

Types of publication: Monographs (single) Serials (ongoing) Fascicles (sections) Parts Websites etc.

Now that we have dealt a bit with the physical aspects of how information is stored, we can discuss the information (knowledge), itself. Where does it come from? Obviously, information comes from people.

Let's imagine that someone has an idea to share:

1. If the person wants to share their idea in other ways than only talking about it, that person or someone else must make a physical copy of it (or today, a virtual copy). This can be done by making a book, a recording, a movie, a song, or something similar. The idea may change over time in different ways. Ultimately, there may end up being many different versions of the idea.
2. People may make their own personal copies of the idea, but others may prefer to pay someone else make their copies for them. Money then becomes necessary to create lots of copies to satisfy the demand. Money is needed in return.
   This creates businesses.
   
3. The copies need to be distributed to people who want to buy them. Depending on various factors, the physical embodiment of the idea may be distributed locally, nationally, or internationally.

This is how ideas have always been shared. Let's see how information production and distribution developed historically.


Information Process: before printing, ca. 1450:
The idea to share is "The Lord's Prayer." How was this shared originally? People memorized it and shared it by word of mouth, but this doesn't end the issue.
First, there are many versions of the Lord's Prayer. Here is a page devoted to all of the different language versions, 1437 versions at this count!
Now, let's only deal with English. There are a lot of English versions!

Before there was printing, people would make their own manuscript copies of the Lord's Prayer. Many people would make "improvements" in the version, and since manuscripts are made by hand, many manuscripts have all sorts of mistakes.
There was still a publication industry of a sort for manuscripts, and people could get a professionally made copy, some of them quite beautiful, if they wished.

We have inherited all of these versions, manuscripts, variants and so on. They did not come down to us in an orderly fashion, and people have to sort it all out. How is this done?

Since everything was made by hand, each copy is unique, which is quite a different situation from printed books or other materials made by machines. Therefore, scholars do a painstaking analysis using many methods, among others they use manuscript collation (describing every part of an individual manuscript), textual analysis (relating the text to different, similar versions), and paleographical analysis (comparing handwriting of different times).

Here is an example of a manuscript collation, comparing one manuscript "Clementine" with another "Lichfeldensis". The analysis at the bottom shows the differences. Scholars compare all kinds of different manuscripts in different ways to try to find the "original idea," and how the text came down to us.

Information Material: Printing Press after 1450

With the introduction of the printing press, something new came into the world that had never existed before: exact duplicates. Additionally, the publishing process became more formalized than ever before, and businesses that we would recognize as real publishers began to appear.

Although the introduction of the printing press mechanized much of the process, there was still a lot of manual labor involved. A printing shop was a very busy place, and mistakes were made and corrected constantly. Just folding the pages and putting them in the right order is extremely complex.

Historical records may show that the author of a text may have been in town while a book was being printed, and he or she could have made substantive corrections during the process of printing the books. Therefore, the number of exact duplicates were relatively few, and scholars often do a similar collation as for manuscripts.

Here is an example of an early printed book collation, which is very similar to the manuscript collation.



Information Material: Automation, ca. 1800


Information Material: Today
Today, there are electronic documents and the Internet, everything is different. There are simultaneously multiple copies and single copies of many things. Even knowing what is a copy presents a tremendous burden. Texts appear one day and disappear the next. Concerning errors and comparing to earlier times, there are both more errors and fewer errors being created.

We are living in a new world and we must all learn to deal with it as best we can. There are pitfalls and opportunities, but the best way to keep control is to understand what is happening.


CONTINUE WITH: The Publication Process