HOW TO FIND INFORMATION/Plan of campaign

The planning for information gathering can be likened to a military operation.A general might gather intelligence reports from informers, identify the stra-tegic targets, plan the provision of food and transport and other facilities for thearmy, prepare a battle plan, review the situation hourly and act accordingly,and  keep  the  commanders  informed  of  the  current  and  future  situations.Similar tasks can be undertaken by a researcher for a successful and compre-hensive outcome: meticulous planning, reviewing, and updating. This militarystyle planning can be vital; stumbling across appropriate information is pos-sible and can retrieve welcome sources, but not reliable. Figure 1.2 shows theinformation gathering process and how the different stages interrelate.As stated above, the process will vary depending on the nature and extent ofthe research. For example, a person requiring a brief overview of a topic willprobably want to identify and obtain a small number of key sources in a shorttime period. They may omit certain stages of the full process.An important aspect of the information searching and retrieval process thatneeds stressing is its iterative (that is, repeating the process) and heuristic (thatis, finding out as the process progresses and learning from what is discovered)nature. The more the researcher discovers, the more it leads to other sources.The key is not to become side-tracked into areas outside the remit, but remainon-task and follow up only relevant leads. As time progresses and the situationchanges, so the researcher should be able to adapt to and monitor the changinglandscape.Having defined the subject and information needs and made the necessarypreparations for information gathering, the researcher is ready to begin.