Lecture
Purpose of this chapter – to outline the range of issues related to the topic of information support for research activity; to familiarize readers with the organisation of the National System of Scientific and Technical Information of Ukraine; to describe the main tools of modern information search – bibliographic indexes and Internet search engines.
Key concepts of this chapter: information support of scientific research, scientific and technical documents, bibliographic information, Internet search engines, National System of Scientific and Technical Information of Ukraine, Ukrainian Institute of Scientific, Technical and Economic Information (UkrINTEI).
The essence of scientific research lies in the creation of new knowledge.
At the same time, a scientist does not create new knowledge «out of nothing». The production of knowledge is the result of processing substantial volumes of source information. And the quality of this source information significantly affects the quality of the scientific result. Therefore, a scientist expends effort not only on obtaining a new scientific result, but also on searching for the «old result», which must become the source information for the research being conducted. The «old scientific result» has already been obtained by someone and has become part of the world's information resources, and now it needs to be extracted from these resources. The problem is that humanity has, since time immemorial, produced a large amount of information. And over time it has become increasingly difficult for a person to find the information they need amid a mass of diverse data.
In this connection a dangerous «gap» has arisen between the creation of information and its consumption: the creator of information and its consumer are far from always able to find each other. Ideally, to solve this problem it would be
necessary to organise all the written information produced by humanity and create something like a «documentary universe», in which all the knowledge accumulated by humanity would form a single
information system, permeated by billions of cross
references. Similar ideas have occurred to scientists since ancient times. The embodiment of these ideas became library catalogues, bibliographic indexes, and, of course, the Internet. All these tools form an important
part of the information support of the research activity of scientists.
Information support of research activity is:
1) information necessary for conducting scientific research;
2) the creation of conditions for supplying research work with the necessary information.
The system of information support of scientific research includes:
- scientific and technical information;
- channels for disseminating scientific and technical information – scientific and technical publications (Fig. 13.2), the Internet, seminars and conferences, as well as computer information systems;
- tools for searching scientific and technical information – bibliographic indexes (see § 13.2) and Internet search engines (see § 13.3);
- bodies responsible for disseminating scientific and technical information – libraries, centres of scientific, technical and economic information;
- corresponding legislative support (the basis of Ukraine's legislation in the field of scientific and technical information consists of the Law of Ukraine «On Information» and the Law of Ukraine «On Scientific and Technical Information»).
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