Interaction Diary Assignment 3

Information Discovery, Option 2

People often interact with information in unfamiliar settings or deal with unfamiliar topics in order to solve problems or answer questions posed by clients or colleagues.  Librarians and information scientists may be asked to recommend a resource or develop a system that will help others to locate reliable information on a topic. In such cases, it is important to apply skills of analysis and communication to the problem.

For this assignment, your task is to discover an authoritative source for information on a topic about which you have limited knowledge. To be "authoritative", there should be evidence that the authors are knowledgeable and that the specific paper is respected by those in a position to know the field. To make the assignment a little more challenging, the paper should not be older than 25 years (it cannot have been published before 1980) and it should be a paper that is written for a general audience, not only for experts. You may use any source you think is appropriate to help you with the assignment as long as you cite that source.

Your will need to define additional criteria (as well as the two criteria I have given you: author credentials and citations of the paper) to be used in identifying an authoritative work. Explain in a brief paper, 2-3 pages, the topic and offer a full citation of the paper you chose, explain why you chose this work, and what you learned about the literature in the field and the topic as part of the process. What are the challenges and limitations of recommending a paper based on this approach?

You may select one of the following topics as long as the subject is unfamiliar to you, or you may choose a topic of your own. It does not matter to me what position the authors take on the topic as long as you can provide evidence that it is an authoritative source. When you find multiple papers, and you should find multiple papers, your task is to select the most authoritative one and support your choice.

Examples:

1. A paper that describes (or denies) the relationship between U.S. oil interests and the Gulf War.

2. A paper that defends (or refutes) the Big Bang theory as explanation for the origin of the universe.

3. A paper that suggests the probable cause of the extinction of the dinosaurs.

4. A paper that provides evidence for the relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

5. A paper that explains what happened to the Anasazi.

6. A paper that  describes the major challenges for information security.

7. A paper that makes the case for (or against) global warming.

8. A paper that critiques the work of John Le Carre or John Grisham or Anne Tyler or other popular modern writer.

9. A paper that explains the difference between object-oriented and structured system design.

10. A theoretical paper on information classification.