SIMS 202 assignments

Week 1 (Aug 25) -- Assignment 1

Students enrolling in the course should fill in the interest and background questionaire. In filling out the questionnaire please take note of the questions below. (This assignment will be discussed in class on the 29th. Write no more than a page on this.)

• State what you consider your academic discipline(s) to be, or any field in which you have expertise. Consider the definitions of information discussed in class. How does your discipline(s) view information and what shades of meaning does your discipline(s) viewpoint contribute?
• There is much discussion in the popular press about information overload, information anxiety, the information glut. Do you think there is really a problem? If so, what are your initial thoughts on potential solutions? If not, why do you think people perceive a problem?

Week 1 Readings

Borges, The Library of Babel (to be distributed in class)

Rowley, Organizing Knowledge Chapters 1-4.

Week 1 (Aug 28) -- Assignment 2

Examine your home or work environment:

• How many types of information sources can you identify?
• What forms do they take?
• What are their contents?
• How do you rate their quality?
• What kind of associated information or Metadata do you need to describe them?

List at least 10 forms. Submit your descriptions by email to ray@sims.berkeley.edu.

Week 2 (Sep 3) -- Assignment 3

Search the MELVYL online catalog and find the answers to these question.

Weeks 3-4 Readings

Rowley, Organizing Knowledge Chapters 5-6.

Week 4 (Sep 18) -- Assignment 4

• Examine the Cookie database using Access:

  • On one of the lab PCs, click on the icon for the computer.
  • This brings up a window listing various drives, etc.
  • Click on Groups$ on 'Newt' (G:)
  • Click on is202
  • Click on Cookie.mdb

• Look at this ER Diagram for the Cookie database:

  

• Consider the possibilities of Book publications

  • What are the problems with the database?
  • What new fields would you add to the database, and where?
  • Draw a new ER diagram showing your design.

This will be a graded assignment -- It is due Thursday, Sept. 25

Click here to see the ER diagram symbols and explanations

Here are the slides from Oct. 28th describing the problems and potential ER diagrams for the COOKIE database

Week 5 Readings

Rowley, Organizing Knowledge Chapters 7, 12-14.

Week 6 Readings

Rowley, Organizing Knowledge Chapters 15-18..

Week 7 Readings

Week 8 Readings

Week 9 Readings

Readings for Lecture 18

Week 10 -- Assignment 5

Readings for Lecture 19

Readings for Lecture 20

Week 11

Readings for Lecture 21

Readings for Lecture 22

Week 12

Readings for Lecture 23

Readings for Lecture 24

Week 13 -- Assignment 6

Readings for Lecture 25

Readings for Lecture 26

Extra Credit Assignment

For extra credit you may write a paper or do a project. Either of these, if done well, can be used to increase your final grade by 1/2 grade point.

PAPER

• The paper should be a research paper on a specific topic related to one of the topics discussed in class. For example, the paper might be a survey of probabilistic retrieval algorithms as they have appeared in the literature, a history and discussion of the Dublin Core and how it has been developed, or an examination of controlled vocabulary use and information retrieval systems and how these system have performed relative to full-text systems.
• The paper should be 5-10 single-spaced pages.
• A consistent bibliographic reference format should be used.

PROJECT

• The project should be a small-scale development project rooted in the ideas discussed in class. For example, you might design a controlled vocabulary to use in categorizing the Dean's Economics web pages, install a search engine for a web site, index the site, and provide a search page for searching the site. Note that these projects would have to add additional functionality to some existing system or site, or would create a new system or site as the project.
• Submitting sites or systems developed for other courses will not be allowed unless the project extends the capabilities of the site beyond the requirements of the other course.

Papers or Projects will be due by December 16th.