| Professor JNR Jeffers | |
| D.Sc. (Lancaster), CStat, CIBiol, FIBiol, CIFor | |
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Introduction
We are usually led to believe that the principal difficulty in finding rational solutions to important problems lies in the lack of available and relevant information. In practice, we are actually overwhelmed by the amounts of information that are potentially available, if only we knew where to look for it, and, more importantly, if we knew how best to use the information we already have. There are, today, extensive libraries of books containing the recorded thoughts of countless numbers of scholars, philosophers, scientists, artists, politicians, etc. Even where access to the actual library in which a particular book is held may be difficult, the advent of photocopying and of facsimile transmission has made it possible to obtain copies of published information rapidly from almost anywhere in the world. The number of scientific and philosophical journals now published increases rapidly year by year, so that detailed information on almost any topic is available, and can usually be found easily through abstracting journals that scan the journal articles and record the topics that they cover. Librarians have become particularly expert at finding relevant information, and are therefore essential and effective colleagues for professional users of information of all kinds. More recently, the Internet has become the focus for the deposition of vast amounts of information available through computers and telephone lines with the aid of suitable communications packages. The Internet, however, is designed to be chaotic so as to prevent political or administrative control of the information that it contains, and finding the information relevant to a particular problem is not necessarily a trivial task. In addition, we already have evidence of individuals becoming totally preoccupied with the finding of more and more information by 'surfing' the net, and yet apparently unable to relate meaningfully to the information that they already have. The purpose of this Series is to suggest that the real problem for all scientists and other users of information lies in knowing how to make the best use of the information they already have. This is not to say that more information may not be necessary at any point in time, but there may be very little point in merely acquiring more facts or opinions when the information already available has not been summarised and understood. The Series, therefore, reviews available methods for managing information. It begins with a discussion of how individuals can best make notes, and integrate new information with what is already known, so that the individual can gain an overall appreciation of a particular area of interest. It suggests appropriate strategies for obtaining new information, especially from books and other forms of information presentation. While 'thinking' is assumed to be a characteristic of all human beings, effective thinking can be improved by a deliberate concentration on a relatively small number of simple techniques. Psychological techniques of construct analysis enable us to understand what we think and to relate our thinking to that of individuals or groups of people with different experience from ourselves.. Working together with other people in workshop situations can also enhance our uses of information, as can explicit use of a number of computer-based techniques which are also described in detail in the Series. |
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