L5. Resources
Resource has an ordinary sense of “anything of value that can support goal-oriented
activity.” This broad definition means that a resource can be a physical thing, information about physical things,
information about non-physical things, or anything you want to organize.
Before we can begin to organize any resource we need to identify it. It might seem straightforward to devise an Organizing
System around tangible resources, but we must be careful not to beg the question of what a resource is. In different situations the same thing can be treated as a unique item, as one of
many equivalent members of a broad category, or as a sub-part of an item rather
than as an item on its own.
When the resources being organized consist of information
content, deciding on the unit of organization is challenging because it might
be necessary to look beyond physical properties and consider conceptual or
intellectual equivalence.