Information Impulse Journal
I mentioned having to keep an information impulse journal during one of my library school classes and Amy Disch replied that she’s curious about the assignment. She has an information impulse to find out what it is. If she had to do this assignment, she could choose to use this for her daily journal entry. She would have to explain what it is she would like to know, why she would like to know it, and what she did to find the answer and why, or if she chose not to do anything to find the answer, why. I don’t remember all of the details–it seems like there were more, like maybe we could only get information from sources via reading–but that’s the basics of the assignment.
At first, it seemed like busy work. I learned how many times I seek information during the day and the many different ways I can satisfy an information need. Desiring information is much more than doing research via a book or the Internet. It’s walking past a tree, noticing an identification tag on it, and walking over to see what it says. It’s reading the weather report on the top of the newspaper habitually. It’s asking someone how servers in the path of Hurricane Charley fared.
August 16th, 2004 at 1:10 am
Thanks Jessica. It does sound very interesting to me. I’m sure I’d be amazed if I tracked all of my information needs over the course of a day and how I satisfied them. Actually the journal component of your assignment has given me a possible idea for the independent study I’m doing this fall, a possible alternative to writing a typical research paper.