Introduction

People often confuse data with information, but they differ in meaning. Data refers to raw, unprocessed facts like names, numbers, or codes that lack context or meaning on their own.Processing, organizing, and placing data in context transforms it into information—something understandable and useful for decision-making.

Flowchart showing the transformation of data. Three "Data" ovals are collected into a large "Processed" rectangle, then presented as "Information."

Important of information

People create information by processing data and presenting it in a useful format that enables understanding and supports decision-making. Information arises when someone interprets data within a meaningful context, not simply by producing the data itself.

People give meaning to information by placing it within a specific context to support decision-making, problem-solving, or completing tasks. Because individuals have different needs, they often arrange the same data in different ways to turn it into useful information.

- - -	Payroll System	Sales Ledger System
Raw Data	Rate of pay, hours worked, deduction, etc.	Customer Sales, customer remittances, etc.
Information	Pay slip, report for management, etc.	Balance owing statements, debtors balances, etc.

Quality of Information

Good information creates value and supports action. People recognize it as useful when they apply it effectively. Research identifies several key qualities that define good information, including the following:

Relevance or Appropriateness: The information must directly relate to the problem at hand. Including irrelevant content in reports often makes them harder to understand, frustrates users, and leads to information overload.
Accuracy: The information must be accurate enough for its intended purpose. The required level of accuracy depends on how the user plans to use the information. For instance, a marketing director may only care if sales figures differ by more than N 15,000.00.
Completeness:The information should be complete in respect of the key elements of the problem.
Timeliness: The user must receive the information early enough to take action or make decisions.
Reliable: Users must trust the source of the information before they can use it confidently.
Communicated to the right person: Information suppliers must analyze the key decision points in an organization and direct the information exactly where someone needs it.
Must contain the right level of detail: Information should include only as much detail as needed for effective decision-making. As one moves up in an organization, the information provided should be more summarized and compressed, reflecting broader overviews rather than detailed data.
Communicated by an appropriate channel of communication: The supplier must transmit the information through a suitable communication channel so the manager can use it effectively.
Communication involves the interchangeable of facts, thoughts, vale judgment and opinions:Communication can take various forms—such as face-to-face talks, phone calls, meetings, reports, or screen displays—but effective communication occurs only when both sender and receiver clearly understand the intended message.
That which is understandable by the user: The user must understand the information for it to become useful. Understandability transforms data into information. If the user cannot understand it, they cannot use it—and it adds no value.

Information Levels

Organizations analyze information at three levels: Strategic, Tactical, and Operational.

Strategic Information: Senior managers use strategic information from internal and external sources to plan long-term goals and monitor progress. This includes data like population trends, investments, and resource availability, typically used for planning over 3 to 5 years.
Tactical Information:Middle management uses tactical information—such as sales forecasts, production needs, and financial statements—for medium-term planning (6 to 24 months). Internal teams typically generate this information weekly or monthly to ensure they use resources effectively and achieve strategic goals.
Operational Information:Frontline managers use operational information—like stock levels, overdue orders, and production schedules—for short-term planning over hours, days, or weeks. This information must be relevant and appropriately detailed without overwhelming users. Managers should avoid excessive precision; for instance, rounding figures to the nearest hundred or thousand is often sufficient for effective decision-making.

Diagram titled "Power of Information in the Digital Age" showing interconnected digital icons such as routers, cloud storage, and smartphones on a blue background.

Types of Information

There are five types of information: facts, concepts, procedures, processes, and principles. A description of each type of information is provided in below, as well as an example of each type.

Fact: - This is a unique bit of information that identifies an object, person, place, or date. The description of each type of information is described below. Example is the driver’s license number.
Concept: - This is a category of items or ideas that share common features. Example is a Cheetah or a Leopard.
Procedure: - A series of steps that show how to make or do something. An example is the procedure in a brushing the teeth.
Process: - A description of how something works or operates. Example is the process of photosynthesis.
Principles: - These are rules, heuristics, guidelines, criteria that predict an outcome. An example is the preparation of a research paper using the school guidelines for writing perfect research papers.

Sources of Information

You can divide written information into several types, and it's easier to explain what each format covers by comparing them.

Primary vs. secondary sources
Books vs. periodicals
Scholarly vs. non-scholarly
Reference vs. general books
Print vs. electronic

Primary vs. Secondary Sources

There are two kinds of sources for information, primary and secondary. Primary sources are first hand, "direct from the source" information. Secondary sources are analyses of primary sources.If you write an autobiography, that's a primary source for your life. If someone reviews or writes a criticism of that autobiography, then that's a secondary source for your life. Or if someone writes a biography of you, that would also be a secondary source.

For literature, the works by an author are primary, and the criticisms of the works are secondary.
For historical issues, letters, diaries, and contemporary accounts are primary sources, while anything written after the event is a secondary source.
For the sciences, the output from the original research on the issue (an article on a survey conducted or the study done) is the primary source, while any analysis or summaries of research done by others is a secondary source.

Books vs. Periodicals

Books

You can also divide written information into two additional forms: books and periodicals. Books themselves come in various types. One common type is the monographic book, also known as a monograph. Writers create monographs as standalone works, not as parts of a series. These books usually provide comprehensive coverage of a general topic—often more in-depth than what you’d find in an article. A well-written monograph offers a clear sense of the subject’s scope, historical context, and detailed analysis.

Not all books follow the monographic format; some are collections of essays or articles by different authors. Though the pieces share a common theme, each article often explores a more specific aspect of the broader issue.

Some books are bibliographies, listing sources on a specific issue. These can be comprehensive—covering all sources within a date range—or selective, highlighting only the best ones. Most book-format bibliographies tend to be comprehensive.

Periodicals

Periodicals include any written material published on a regular schedule. Writers publish newspapers, magazines, and journals as examples of periodicals. The articles in these publications usually focus on specific aspects of a topic, unlike monographs, which cover subjects more broadly. Periodicals appear in many different formats.

Newspapers usually offer articles that are factual accounts of events,but they can be an analysis of trends or issues as well.Journalists usually write newspaper articles, not experts in the field, and they typically don't include suggested readings or cite their sources. However, newspapers work well for covering current events and providing primary source material.
Popular magazines are the least scholarly and are mainly for entertainment.Articles tend to offer general tips or advice, or interviews with celebrities.Examples: Good Housekeeping, GQ, People, Road & Track, Vogue, etc.
Trade magazines are those published by associations and/or aimed at practitioners in a particular field, offering mainly practical, how-to articles, or news useful to the field.If the magazine looks like it might be scholarly, but the articles within are clearly not,then it's probably a trade magazine.Examples:Advertising Age,Computerworld,Progressive Farmer, etc.
News magazines are more similar to newspapers,in that they offer factual,current events news and analysis.Examples: Economist,Maclean's,Newsweek,Time, etc.
Opinion magazines only offer analysis of issues and trends,sometimes with a political agenda.Examples:Christianity Today,The Nation,National Review,New Republic etc.
A journal is the name given a periodical that is scholarly in nature. Articles are written by researchers or academics and should offer citations to sources consulted.How a particular article winds up in the journal depends on the kind of journal it is.
A peer-reviewed journal accepts manuscripts and farms them out to other experts in the field to judge the article,usually without the name of the author.The article is then critiqued and is either accepted, sent back to the author for revisions, or
outright rejected.
Other journals do not accept unsolicited manuscripts;rather they recruit particular individuals and ask them to contribute an article. So while this type of journal isn't peer-reviewed, it is very selective and just as prestigious to be published in.
And some journals aren't quite as rigorous as the two above.The works are scholarly but article proposals are judged in-house by the editor or the editorial board, rather than peer-reviewed.

Most journals will tell you straight out if they are peer-reviewed or not in the description of its scope,near where the journal lists the editor/editorial board.Otherwise you can consult a reference set called Ulrich's Periodical Directory, kept behind the Information Desk on Level 2.

Scholarly vs. Non-Scholarly

One could also divide information into two camps, scholarly and non-scholarly. Sometimes your instructors will place limits on the types of sources you may use for your research, stating that you can only use scholarly information. Periodicals can be clearly divided this way, usually referred to as journals vs. magazines. But to judge whether a book is scholarly or not, it's best to note who the author is and what his/her credentials are, and whether there is a bibliography and notes to sources consulted.

To a certain extent you can judge this also by the publisher. As a rule, university presses almost always publish scholarly works, while other presses may or may not. But whenever your instructor states that you can only use scholarly sources, be more vigilant in critiquing the information. Note the credentials of the author. And if there are no references to sources, you may want to dismiss it.

Reference vs. General Collection

Another dichotomy in information sources is reference sources vs. general collection books.Reference works are those resources that you only want to "refer" to a small section of the work,either to find a quick fact, or to get a general overview of an issue. The information sources found in the reference collection vary widely, but here are some common ones.

Encyclopaedias are the best sources for reading an overview of a topic. There are both general encyclopaedias, which try to summarize all knowledge, and subject-specific encyclopaedias, which focus only on a general topic like health or the environment, and offer overviews of aspects of the general topic. The entries within encyclopaedias can range from a paragraph to 30 pages. Most subject-specific encyclopaedias will also offer a short bibliography or suggestions for further reading.
Dictionaries offer shorter definitions and summaries of terms. Like encyclopaedias,dictionaries can be general or subject-specific. Also, just to make it even more confusing,some reference works are entitled Dictionary of something, but are in fact encyclopaedias in terms of scope and length of the entries.
Handbooks/Manuals/Guides are works that offer quick facts, formulas, equations, or names and addresses for a particular subject.
Atlases offer information in cartographic form. While you may think of atlases as just offering maps of countries or U.S. states, some atlases describe historical events or social issues in map form,e.g. the changing borders of European countries, or the percentage of people in poverty around the world.
Almanacs offer quick facts, either for all subjects, e.g. The World Almanac and Book of Facts, or subject-specific, e.g. The Almanac of Illinois Politics.
Statistical compilations describe issues with numbers. Some are general in scope, the best known being the Statistical Abstract, but there are some that only cover a general subject,such as criminal justice or economics. Most statistical compilations are published by state,federal, or international agencies, and may then be found in the Government Publications area, rather that Reference.

Print vs. Electronic

And finally, there's print vs. electronic information.Like print, electronic information encompasses all the formats mentioned above. You can find electronic books, electronic periodicals, electronic reference works, etc.

But print is not dead, for a variety of reasons.

Publishers themselves have been somewhat wary about going completely digital, and some of them package the electronic versions with purchase of print copies.
Libraries have centuries worth of print information, and a lot of it is not going to be digitized anytime soon, if ever, simply because it wouldn't be profitable to digitize it.
Some types of information don't lend themselves to being read on a computer because of the current technology, and it isn't cost effective for individuals to print out the information.Most e-books, e-journals, databases, and online encyclopaedias are not free. The library purchases them, and then gives free access to their patrons who have paid for library resources, either tax dollars for public libraries and/or tuition to academic libraries.

And then there are all those free websites. There's a lot of useful information out there in cyberspace, as well as lots of unsubstantiated, worthless information as well. You can find information on any topic, assuming that someone bothered to create the website. So why would someone take the time and effort to put the website together?

For commercial enterprises, they bothered because they want to sell you something, or they want to attract your attention to bring in advertising revenue.
For mainstream news organizations or publishers, they are already set up to make money via advertising, so they may be able afford to offer free content. But they may only have a week's worth of articles available, or selected articles to entice you to subscribe.
For federal and state government agencies, they have a legal mandate to disseminate information gathered via tax dollars back to the public.So the Internet is seen as a cheaper method of dissemination than print.
For non-profit organizations, they want to "get the word out" about their cause, so the Internet is a perfect medium to distribute their own reports.
Scholarly information generated by academics can be found,but we are still in the infancy of the Internet being used for this.There have been a number of big pushes to have more e journals to counteract the costs of scholarly journals,especially in the sciences.And there are a number of digitization projects of historical, primary documents on the Web, many of them sponsored by academic institutions.

Conclusion

Information is the core of information technology—it powers the digital world, enabling innovation, communication, and automation. Understanding information is key to designing and managing IT systems. In today’s digital era, IT transforms how we access, process, and use information, driving progress and change.

Exploring the Power of Information in the Digital Age