The Organization of Informaton

Chapter 1:  Organization of Recorded Information

According to Taylor and Joudrey in The Organization of Information, there seems to be a basic need to organize 1.  to group things,  2.  to understand the world around us, 3.  to save time, and 4. to retrieve what we are looking for.  I can see how intertwined all of the reasons for organization are in my own life.  Organization is important to me when I am looking for where I put my purple, not red socks; wondering how many people will use forks, not chopsticks, at my party; or deciding what students I can enroll in a library contest that wants participants who are 10 years old, whether they are in 4^th or 5^th grade.  Recorded information which has similar basic characteristics—title, creator and topic—known as metadata, or data about data, has been organized in a variety of locations, including libraries, museums and archives as well as on the Internet. This information is managed in ways particular to the institution in which it is housed to maximize successful retrieval.