i202 Fall 2010 School of Information, UC Berkeley

A1: 202 IN THE NEWS - Jess - Assigned 8/30; Due Wed 9/22

In our first lecture, we took a broad look at the relationship between information organization and information retrieval, with readings that range from highly philosophical—Borges—to real-world actualization of IO and IR—MyLifeBits. It’s important to see just how pervasive these issues are in the world around us, so your first assignment will be to find a news story or a short article to get you thinking about the ubiquity and importance of IO and IR concepts in our lives as individuals, as members or employees of organizations, as citizens, and so on. 

1) Find a reasonably recent "202 in the News" story (published since 1 January 2009)

2) Write a brief blog entry about your story, summarizing it and highlighting its 202-ness. We’ve posted some of our favorite “202 in the News” posts from last year so you can see what we’re looking for. Write at least two paragraphs and no more than four that contextualize the story—that is, why is this “202 in the News”? Also, see if you can answer the five questions about organizing systems in Chapter 1 of Glushko & Borgman’s “Intellectual Foundations of Information Organization and Information Retrieval.” You don’t need to list questions and answers explicitly like you will for the section on-call posts, just keep them in mind as you write.

For more information on how to create a blog entry, visit the How To section.

3) Determine which lecture(s) your story best fits under and label it with the most appropriate lecture tag(s)—"L1", "L2", etc.  Some may fit under several lectures, so make sure to review the entire list.  Click here for a shortcut view of the lectures and lecture tags.  

4) Also include at least 4 other tags to categorize your story. Choose the tags to describe your post’s content, keeping in mind that this is a useful way to find blog posts to reference later on. 

Note: This assignment will not be graded as an individual assignment; it will be included in your participation grade. Learn more about Participation here.