General Definitions Related To Information Management

GENERAL DEFINITIONS RELATED TO INFORMATION MANAGEMENT 1. INFORMATION MANAGEMENT The skillful exercise of control over the acquisition, organization, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of information resources, usually within a company, organization, or government agency, including documentation and records management.

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2. INFORMATION ETHICS The branch of ethics that deals with the relationship between: 1. The creation, organization, dissemination, and use of information, and the implicit ethical standards and; 2. Explicit legal codes that govern human conduct in society. Information ethics is a very broad concept which giving birth to, among others: • Information law • Intellectual freedom • Censorship • Privacy • Intellectual property • Plagiarism.

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3. INFORMATION INDUSTRY • A broad term encompassing all the companies and individuals in the business of providing information and access to information for a profit. • Examples of the activities include the mass media, publishers, software and database producers and vendors, indexing and abstracting services, and freelance information brokers. • Public libraries, academic libraries, and many types of special libraries are not part of the information industry because they are nonprofit.

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4. INFORMATICS

The formal study of information--its structure, functions, properties, and the technology used to record, organize, store, retrieve, and disseminate it. 5. INFORMATION LITERACY Skill in finding the information one needs, which requires knowledge of how to search for the information and the sources how libraries are organized, familiarity with the resources they provide (including information formats and computerized search tools), and knowledge of standard research techniques.

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6. INFORMATION NEED • A gap in a person's knowledge which, when experienced at the conscious level as a question, gives rise to a search for an answer. • Persons with information needs often end up at the reference desk of the nearest library, where it is the responsibility of the reference librarian to determine the precise nature of the inquiry, usually by conducting an informal reference interview, and then recommend resources that satisfy the user's request. They also may turn to the assistance of the information professional to meet their needs. • It is the job of collection development librarians and information professionals to anticipate the information needs of the clientele, sometimes with the aid of survey research, and to select materials that meet those needs. • Patrons with questions, which cannot be answered using the resources of the library, may be referred to other information providers in the local community, or elsewhere.

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7. INFORMATION SCIENCE • A branch of knowledge which investigates the sources, development, dissemination, use, and management of information in all its forms. Compare with informatics and library science.

8. INFORMATION LAW • The regulation and control of information by the state, including laws regarding censorship, forgery, copyright and intellectual property, freedom of information, intellectual freedom, privacy, and computer crime. • Also, a specialized branch of legal studies dealing with the regulation of information (you should be able to differentiate between information ethics and information law) 6

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTIES An intellectual property is any product of the human intellect that is unique, novel, and unobvious (and has some value in the marketplace). Among them are: · idea · invention · expression or literary creation · unique name · business method · industrial process · chemical formula · computer program process · presentation The word property is generally used to mean a possession, or more specifically, something to which the owner has legal rights

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GENERAL VIEWS • Intellectual Property is defined as any new and useful process, machine, composition of matter, life form, article of manufacture, software, copyrighted work or tangible property • Property that can be protected under existing state laws, including copyrightable works, ideas, discoveries, and inventions. Such property would include novels, sound recordings, a new type of mousetrap, or a cure for a disease.

• It includes such things as new or improved devices, circuits, chemical compounds, drugs, genetically engineered organisms, data sets, 8

Continue… • software, musical processes or unique and innovative uses of existing Inventions. • Intellectual Property may or may not be patentable or copyrightable. It is created when something new and useful has been conceived or developed, or when unusual, unexpected or non-obvious results, obtained with an existing Invention, can be practiced for some useful purpose. • Intellectual Property can be created by one or more individuals, each of whom, to be an Inventor, must have conceived of an essential element or have contributed substantially to its conceptual development.

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ORGANIZATION • The World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This organization was founded in 1967 as one of the specialized agencies of the United Nations organizations, and it has since remained responsible for the protection of intellectual property. • Because the WIPO is the leading authority on this matter, we turn to the text of the Convention Establishing the WIPO for a definition of intellectual property. The treaty states that intellectual property generally refers to rights relating to, among others, the following: 1. literary, artistic, and scientific works 2. performances of performing artists, phonograms, and broadcasts 3. inventions in all fields of human endeavor 4. scientific discoveries.

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• In other words, intellectual property, in the most general sense, encompasses creations of the human intellect and their protection, usually by copyright. • WIPO is internationally responsible for both the protection of intellectual property (by means of cooperation among its member nations) and the legal and administrative aspects of it. To this end, it administers various treaties, all which attempt to better the protection of intellectual property.

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Copyright • Copyright is a form of protection provided by laws to the authors of original works, otherwise known as the owners of intellectual property. The international Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works in 1971 established that works protected under copyright include: 1. Literary and artistic works, which includes every production in the literary, scientific, and artistic domain, whatever the mode of expression 2. Dramatic and dramatico-musical works 3. Choreographic works 4. Photographic works 5. Works of applied art.

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WIPO, has established guidelines in its Copyright Law where it is generally agreed that only the owner of the copyright is authorized to do the following with the work: 1. Reproduce it 2. Prepare derivative works based upon it 3. Distribute copies of it to the public 4. Perform the work publicly (if applicable) 5. Display the work publicly. 13

PROTECTION REGARDING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY • Protections come in terms of Copyright and Industrial Property • Industrial Property is divided into three: · Patents · Trademarks · Industrial Design PATENT An invention is patentable if it is new, involves an inventive step and is industrially applicable. An invention is defined as being an idea which permits in practice the solution to a specific problem in the field of technology and may be a product of process. 14

Continue… Some ideas which may otherwise be inventive are specifically excluded from patentability. These are: • Discoveries, scientific theories and mathematical methods • Plant or animal varieties or essentially biological processes for the production of plants or animals, other than made-made living micro-organisms, micro-biological processes and the products of such micro-biological processes • Schemes, rules or methods for doing business, performing purely mental acts or playing games • Methods for the treatment of the human or animal body by surgery or therapy, and diagnostic methods practiced on the human or animal body. But this does not apply to products used in such methods

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Trademark

• Trademark is a mark used on goods or services which can consist of a word, a device, name, signature, letter or any of those combination. Industrial Design • Industrial Design protects the shape, pattern, or color of the article which must appeal to the eyes and reproducible by industrial means • It is new which must not have been publicly disclosed.

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