LI 835 Information Transfer in the Disciplines Dr. Susan Ward Aber

Information transfer medium, Štrba, Slovakia. Photo by J.S. Aber, 17 July, 2007.

This course was first offered for university credit in the spring 2007 semester. Visit Course Schedule and Syllabi to see when it will be taught again for ESU, slim.emporia.edu/program/syllabus/syllabus.htm. Specifically, this course was designed to introduce students to the general nature of questions and guiding paradigms of information transfer and communication within academic disciplines using an international experience for geoscientists as an example. Read on for the introduction and if you are interested in this course, please contact Dr. Aber at saber@emporia.edu.

Introduction to Information Transfer

Greetings from Slovensko! On English maps, this Central European country is known as the Slovak Republic or Slovakia. However, on older maps it may be depicted as the eastern portion of Czechoslovakia. This marriage of the Czech and Slovak Republics, was imposed after World War I. A peaceful separation between these two countries occurred in 1993, and Slovakia became a member of NATO and the European Union in 2004. The map below shows the Slovak Republic and surrounding countries.
Map image taken from the CIA Fact Book, www.cia.gov and select Slovakia.
Information transfer medium, Štrba, Slovakia. Photo by J.S. Aber, 17 July, 2007.	My husband, Jim, and I are residing in Štrba at the foothills of Vysoké Tatry or High Tatra Mountains. This quiet village is shown on the map above with a black square, which is 18 km west of Poprad. With the exception of the cities on the map, Slovakia is rural or a country rich with small villages. These communities are too small for newspapers or radio stations, but all have churches and a potraviny or a small shop with a variety of food, liquor, and other necessities. We are in Slovakia for July and August, 2007. Living away from our home base of Emporia, Kansas, gives us a different perspective on the variety of ways in which information is transferred. For example, in Štrba and other small Slovakian cities, one main mass communication model that works is a system of speakers mounted on poles, as shown in the image above and to the right (click on the image for a larger view). Following a pleasant musicial piece, the mayor makes special announcements. In Kansas, a similar system of speakers exists to sound a siren to warn of impending tornadoes. It is our experience that in Štrba the messages alerted inhabitants to special opportunities to buy fresh vegetables from local farmers or to ride a special bus to a nearby city for a day of shopping.

When we are in Emporia, we often communicate information via telephone. However, this is an unrealistic here because the rental house has no telephone. From our past experience, even with a telephone in a Polish apartment reaching a number in the U.S. meant first negotiating with the Polish operator, which proved to be impossible for us. The CIA Fact Book reported that in 2005, Slovakia had a population of 5.5 million and 1.2 million conventional land-line telephones. While this may not sound like a connected population, there are 4.5 million cell phones reported. This follows the trend we observed when living in Estonia in 2000, where mobile cell phones outnumbered land-lines and Estonians used the cell phone for calling people and paying bills. When did you acquire your first cell phone service?

When I created this introduction to the course, I was in Slovakia and files were transferred through FTP, file transfer protocol, from our house. This fast means of information transfer assumes both sender and receiver have computers and internet services. We have internet because our Slovakian colleague, Juraj Janocko, obtained the modem and arranged the service for us via Orange Slovensko, a.s., an internet service provider from Bratislava, the capital city of Slovakia. This is one of two internet providers for this country. The other internet option, a wireless connection, was not possible because of our proximity to the high mountains and that T-Mobile service range stopped 50 meters short of our house! When did you become active on the Internet and acquire service in your residence? Is it a wireless or dial-up modem connections?

Information transfer is important to us to let family and friends know we are well. Letters and post cards are sent to family and friends without Internet or when we wanted to show the interior of the ice cave and salt mine that we visited in Austria but were unable to photograph and put online. This requires some knowledge of the language and city layout in order to purchase the cards and locate the post office for stamps and mailings. Although information transfer is important to us abroad, more imperative is that we have dependable electricity, safe tap water, a solid home, and nice neighbors! These things we have except for the occasional power outages. When was the last time you sent a post card or experienced a power outage?

Information is transferred in many different resources and formats through oral and written text and images. There is a map image shown above complete with a scale, but for people familiar with U.S. states it might be useful to know Slovakia is the size of combining Vermont and New Hampshire. This country is surrounded by Poland to the north, Czech Republic to the northwest, Austria to the west, Hungary to the south, and Ukraine to the east. This same information is enhanced by viewing the map below, which is a color shaded relief map that also gives you an idea of the topography.

The image map accentuates the high mountains in the central and northern portions of the country and lowlands to the southeast and southwest. The lowest point in Slovakia is 94 meters 310 feet and highest, Gerlachovský Štít or Gerlachov Peak at 2655 meters or 8710 feet. Slovakian mountains are part of the Carpathians, which are the eastern extension of the Alps as shown by this image. You might be interpreting this information as a country tourists would enjoy for beautiful scenery--and you would be right!

Slovakians offer goods and services at reasonable prices and the country has beautiful landscapes to enjoy. The greatest hurdle for all central European countries that became autonomous since 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall has been the transition from a centralized communal economy to a modern market economy. Although unemployment remains higher and salaries lower than desired, foreign investment and tourism are rising.

The Slovakian economic base is similar to Kansas in that there is oil and gas production as well as crops and livestock. Although sugar beets and hops are produced in Slovakia and not grown in Kansas, both regions are funneling agricultural products away from the food market and toward the biofuel industry. The photograph shown below helps to visualize the landscapes and economic assets of Slovakia including the touristic attraction to the mountains, idyllic villages, and agricultural fields.

Visual images enhance and clarify written and oral text. Still and animated figures and photographs are often used by teachers for classroom instruction. In the geosciences, resources such as images, maps, specimens, and class field trips serve to bridge the transition between transferring information and creating knowledge. While I cannot bring you physically to Slovakia, I will bring Slovakia to you throughout this course using text and images. In addition, I will use the information needs and behaviors of geoscience educators as an example of information transfer in one of the disciplines within the natural sciences.

Information Transfer Defined

Greer (1987) separated information and knowledge when he declared information to be organized data external to the intellect and knowledge to be information internal to the intellect (p. 4). As an example, 49 03 20 N 20 04 30 E is data or information in the form of numbers and symbols. However, some of you may recognize these numbers as 49° 03' 20" North latitude and 20° 04' 30" East longitude figures representing a geographic location within the country of Slovakia, specifically Štrba. I have transferred data and information to some and to others, this information was communicated and understood or converted into knowledge without further communication or explanation. Thus, the ability to comprehend information and convert it into useable knowledge may require a background within a specific discipline or culture. Otherwise, it may be meaningless noise, which is unfortunately what most of the words are to me that I am hearing and seeing during this European excursion!

Case (2002) defined information as "any difference you perceive, in your environment or within yourself" (p. 5). While this definition may seem individualistic, it may be that groups or sets of people will process information with similar or identical perceptions. Reitz (2004) stated that information was "data presented in readily comprehensible form to which meaning has been attributed within a context for its use. . . . more concretely, all the facts, conclusions, ideas, and creative works of the human intellect and imagination that have been communicated, formally or informally, in any form." Reitz went on to suggest that in addition to context, experience was needed in order for information to be comprehended and "incorporated into the knower's intellectual understanding of the subject." If perceptions rely on experience and meaning on context, then the same information may take on multiple meanings to different people even when they share expertise within a single discipline.

Regardless of your definition of information as product or process, finding and using information are necessary skills and behaviors essential to humans. Library and information professionals are positioned to help or hinder information needs and behaviors among individuals or sets of people. This course will focus on investigating information transfer within disciplines and examining similarities and differences in information needs and behaviors among different sets of people. One course outcome is to sharpen your interpersonal skills in order to feel comfortable as a liaison between librarian and client, regardless of your level of expertise in the client's discipline and experience with the resources common to a discipline.

References