Information Science Books

The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

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Total reviews: 353 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

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A black swan is a highly improbable event with three principal characteristics: It is unpredictable; it carries a massive impact; and, after the fact, we concoct an explanation that makes it appear less random, and more predictable, than it was. The astonishing success of Google was a black swan; so was 9/11. For Nassim Nicholas Taleb, black swans underlie almost everything about our world, from the rise of religions to events in our own personal lives.

Why do we not acknowledge the phenomenon of black swans until after they occur? Part of the answer, according to Taleb, is that humans are hardwired to learn specifics when they should be focused on generalities. We concentrate on things we already know and time and time again fail to take into consideration what we don’t know. We are, therefore, unable to truly estimate opportunities, too vulnerable to the impulse to simplify, narrate, and categorize, and not open enough to rewarding those who can imagine the “impossible.”

For years, Taleb has studied how we fool ourselves into thinking we know more than we actually do. We restrict our thinking to the irrelevant and inconsequential, while large events continue to surprise us and shape our world. Now, in this revelatory book, Taleb explains everything we know about what we don’t know. He offers surprisingly simple tricks for dealing with black swans and benefiting from them.

Elegant, startling, and universal in its applications The Black Swan will change the way you look at the world. Taleb is a vastly entertaining writer, with wit, irreverence, and unusual stories to tell. He has a polymathic command of subjects ranging from cognitive science to business to probability theory. The Black Swan is a landmark book–itself a black swan.

Start Your Own Information Marketing Business (Entrepreneur's Startup)

Entrepreneur Press

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Take Your Information and Turn It into a Six-Figure Income

A six-figure income from information? Yes! It sounds easy because it is. You've got information that millions of others are looking for and now you can learn how to package, price and sell it.

The experts at Entrepreneur take you step by step, jumpstarting your thinking about your area of expertise and showing you how to convert it into a high-demand information product. Following the example set by today's most successful information marketers, you learn the ins and outs of running your own information marketing business using proven strategies and effective marketing techniques. Whether looking for a side business or a full-time venture-information marketing is a flexible, lucrative business that you can start any time, and everything you need is right here.

• Choose from a wide range of information products or discover what information you already have to sell
• Capture the perfect market-one that is looking for your product
• Determine your selling price
• Learn from real-life success stories
• Get started right away with a listing of dozens of information-marketing resources and vendors

Everything you need to know to create your own information product is already inside you. Now, let Entrepreneur help you turn it into big profits!

Googlepedia: The Ultimate Google Resource (3rd Edition)

Michael Miller

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Googlepedia® Third Edition

The all-encompassing book about everything Google. Not only will you learn advanced search techniques, but you also will learn how to master Google’s web and software tools. It’s all inside!

 

Google Chrome

Google’s new web browser

 

Google Gadgets

create your own gadgets

 

Google Gears

turn web applications into desktop applications

 

Android

use Google’s phone

 

Blogger

create your own personal blog

 

Gmail

Google’s web-based email service

 

Google Web Search

the most popular search on the Internet

 

Google AdSense

put profit-making ads on their own website

 

Google AdWords

buy keyword advertising on the Google site

 

Google Product Search

find hot deals without ever leaving your office chair

 

Google Calendar

a web-based scheduling and public calendar service

 

Google Desktop

search documents and emails on your PC’s hard drive

 

Google Docs

create and share web-based word processing and spreadsheet documents

 

Google Earth

a fun way to view 3D maps of any location on Earth

 

YouTube

view and share videos over the Web

 

Google Groups

a collection of user-created message forums

 

Google Maps

maps, satellite images, and driving directions for any location

 

GOOGLE MAY BE THE INTERNET’S MOST POPULAR SEARCH SITE, BUT IT’S ALSO MORE THAN JUST SIMPLE WEB SEARCHES.

•    Use Google developer tools and APIs

     •    Create MySpace and Facebook applications with OpenSocial

     •    Use Google Gears to turn web-based applications into desktop applications

     •    Use Google to search for news headlines, scholarly articles, and the best prices on the Web

     •    Read and respond to blog postings and create your own blogs with Blogger

     •    View the latest viral videos with YouTube

     •    Use Android, the new Google phone

     •    Use Google with the Apple iPhone and iPod Touch

     •    Create maps and driving directions with Google Maps

     •    Use Google’s free web-based email service Gmail

     •    Create your own custom Google Maps mashups–and put customized Google search on your own website

 

 

Michael Miller has written more than 80 nonfiction how-to books, including Que’s Absolute Beginner’s Guide to Computer Basics, YouTube for Business, and Photopedia: The Ultimate Digital Photography Resource.

 

Category: Internet

Covers: Google

User Level: Intermediate to Advanced

 

Generation Blend: Managing across the Technology Age Gap

Rob Salkowitz

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Technology and demographics are on a collision course. Digital Natives, Boomerang Boomers, and Generation X-ecutives are all grappling with the transformative implications of Web 2.0 technologies, and organizations are scrambling for the best ways to unlock the talents of a multigenerational workforce in a connected world. Generation Blend ventures deep into the technology age gap and provides real-world solutions to combine the best that younger and older workers have to offer.

Generation Blend explores how generational attitudes toward technology affect issues as diverse as recruitment and retention, employee training, management decision-making, collaboration, knowledge sharing, work/life balance, and ordinary workday activities. How can your organization promote the continuity of knowledge and culture in the face of the coming demographic transition? What hidden factors put new technology deployments at risk? How can IT departments manage the growing demand for social and collaborative software while maintaining governance and security? What initiatives can you launch to bridge the divide in work styles and tech-savvy that separates veterans and newcomers in the workforce?

In Generation Blend, author Rob Salkowitz builds on the groundbreaking work of Don Tapscott (Wikinomics, Growing Up Digital), William Strauss and Neil Howe (Generations, Millennials Rising), and many others to connect the dots of sociology, technology, and management, and trace a roadmap for decision-makers. Generation Blend is rich with research and includes two original in-depth case studies from organizations that have developed unique approaches to bridging the technology age gap: Microsoft’s Board of the Future project, which assembles college-age students from around the world to discuss a wide range of workplace issues, and Older Adults Technology Services, a New York based nonprofit dedicated to intergenerational technology training and reciprocal mentoring programs. Organizations of all types and sizes can profit from their methods.

The retirement of the Baby Boomers, the arrival of the Millennials, and the impact of Web 2.0 technology in the enterprise create unprecedented complexity for employers and workers in the 2010s and beyond. Organizations looking to solve the puzzle of productivity across the technology age gap should start with Generation Blend.

Decoding the Universe: How the New Science of Information Is Explaining Everything in the Cosmos, from Our Brains to Black Holes

Charles Seife

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Total reviews: 28 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Information theory, the third physics revolution of the XXth century 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 2 people found this review helpful.

The author has a degree in probability theory and artificial intelligence, but he is a professor of journalism and has therefore written a book which is both very entertaining and not too difficult to understand. The subject is information, which Seife claims is the third XXth century revolution in physics started by Claude Shannon and which has relations with the other two: Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

Of course, information is also related to thermodynamics and entropy, so the book contains a discussion of all these topics: thermodynamics, relativity and quantum mechanics. Famous conundrums such as Schroedinger's cat, entanglement, Maxwell's demon, etc. are analyzed from the point of view of information theory.

Here are some snippets of the book:

According to Seife, Einstein dictum "Nothing can travel faster than light" is really about information:" Information speed cannot exceed c". Another interesting fact is that what really causes computers to heat is the erasure of bits.

Seife describes recent achievements and experiments, proof that he is familiar with the latest results. One curious example is the solution of "the knight problem" in 2000 by using a DNA computer! Another one is that the entire human race has less genetic diversity than a few scores of chimps due to some kind of cataclysm about 500,000 years ago. A third one is the 1996 experiment demonstrating the existence of virtual particles (the so called Casimir effect).

In chapter 7, quantum computers are introduced and the possibility of the brain being one is briefly discussed. Unfortunately, it seems that Max Tegmark proved Roger Penrose wrong on this count. You begin to understand the power of quantum computation when the author describes Grover's algorithm to guess a number out of 16. Classically you need four yes/no answers to four questions. Grover manages the same task with two. Quantum computation reduces the complexity of some problems from n to square root of n.

I found also very interesting the reasons why the photoelectric effect cannot be explained by waves. On the other hand, interference cannot be explained by a corpuscular theory of light, so we are stuck with duality.

Towards the end, the author discusses black holes and the holographic principle: the quantity of information contained in a ball is not limited by its volume (surprisingly), but by its area. Since most cosmologists consider now the universe infinite (inflation seems to imply this) we are led, via the holographic bound, to the conclusion that the universe contains infinite copies of our own bubble universe. Seife admits that this is the most bizarre thing among the many ones described in his book.

Editorial Review:

The author of Zero explains the scientific revolution that is transforming the way we understand our world

Previously the domain of philosophers and linguists, information theory has now moved beyond the province of code breakers to become the crucial science of our time. In Decoding the Universe, Charles Seife draws on his gift for making cutting-edge science accessible to explain how this new tool is deciphering everything from the purpose of our DNA to the parallel universes of our Byzantine cosmos. The result is an exhilarating adventure that deftly combines cryptology, physics, biology, and mathematics to cast light on the new understanding of the laws that govern life and the universe.

Guided Inquiry: Learning in the 21st Century

Carol C. Kuhlthau, Leslie K. Maniotes, Ann K. Caspari

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Editorial Review:

Noted researcher Kuhlthau has teamed up with a curriculum specialist and museum educator to create this foundational text on Guided Inquiry, a dynamic, integrated approach to teaching curriculum content, information literacy, and strategies for learning. Grounded in Kuhlthau's Information Search Process from her classic text Seeking Meaning and built on solid professional practice, this innovative team approach inspires students to gain deeper understandings and higher order thinking using the rich resources of the school library, the community and the wider world. This book provides the vital tools for educators to create collaborative environments where students experience school learning and real life meshed in integral ways - learning in the 21st century.

Management Basics for Information Professionals, Second Edition

G. Edward Evans, Patricia Layzell Ward

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Completely revised and expanded to reflect the rapidly changing sphere of information services, this comprehensive introduction to the management of libraries builds the basic skills good library managers must exercise. The authors offer an authoritative approach on the fundamental concepts of management while recognizing the diverse needs of different operating environments. This edition features two new chapters - Managing Diversity and Career Development - and is kept up to current by material housed on the Web. Drawing from examples of successful leadership techniques from a variety of services archives, information brokers, libraries, records managements and more, this book demonstrates the most effective ways to plan, delegate, make decisions, communicate, and lead a team. Equal emphasis is placed on personal, fiscal, and technological issues, as well as a look at what the future may hold for incoming managers. A practical, up-to-date introduction to library management, here is a text that will appeal to LIS educators, new and experienced libraries in management positions, students, and anyone wishing to acquire a sound knowledge of both the theory and practice of management within the changing information workforce.

Information Design

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foreword by Richard Saul Wurman


Information design is the newest of the design disciplines. As a sign of our times, when the crafting of messages and meaning is so central to our lives, information design is not only important—it is essential. Contemporary information designers seek to edify more than to persuade, to exchange more than to foist upon. With ever more powerful technologies of communication, we have learned that the issuer of designed information is as likely as the intended recipient to be changed by it, for better or worse.

The contributors to this book are both cautionary and hopeful as they offer visions of how information design can be practiced diligently and ethically, for the benefit of information consumers as well as producers. They present various methods that seem to work, such as sense-making and way-finding. They make recommendations and serve as guides to a still young but extraordinarily pervasive—and persuasive—field.

Contributors: Elizabeth Andersen, Judy Anderson, Simon Birrell, Mike Cooley, Brenda Dervin, Jim Gasperini, Yvonne M. Hansen, Steve Holtzman, Robert E. Horn, Robert Jacobson, John Krygier, Sheryl Macy, Romedi Passini, Jef Raskin, Chandler Screven, Nathan Shedroff, Hal Thwaites, Roger Whitehouse.

100% Information Literacy Success (100% Success)

Quantum Integrations

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100% Information Literacy Success is the fourth text in the 100% Success series, and serves as a guide to the information literacy standards as described by the American Library Association. This text instructs students and professionals on developing crucial information skills to succeed in today's academic and professional environments. 100% Information Literacy Success is designed for use as both a comprehensive textbook as well as an easily accessible reference supporting readers beyond the classroom. Using hands-on learning activities and real-world applications, the text teaches readers how to determine the nature and extent of information needed to solve a problem, how to access the information effectively, how to evaluate the information found, how to use the information for a specific purpose, and how to effectively and legally communicate the information. Features of the text include critical thinking exercises, reflection questions, hints, and step-by-step research guidance- all of which help students understand and apply crucial skills while becoming comfortable with independent research and effective presentation methods. The 100% Information Literacy Success text is accompanied by an online companion, which contains student practice exercises, web resources, and tips for developing effective written documents and presentations. Instructor resources include lesson plans, quizzes, and power point presentations for each chapter.

Principles of Incident Response and Disaster Recovery

Michael E. Whitman, Herbert J. Mattord

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Practical Method for experienced people 4 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

This book provides lots of example formats for your DRP and gives solid guidance for how to conduct the DR planning sessions. If you know nothing about DRP/BCP, you might want to read Toigo's book first, but this book will get you started much more quickly.

Editorial Review:

Are you ready to respond to an unauthorized intrusion to your computer network or server? Principles of Incident Response and Disaster Recovery presents methods to identify vulnerabilities and take appropriate countermeasures to prevent and mitigate failure risks for an organization. Not only does book present a foundation in disaster recovery principles and planning, but it also emphasizes the importance of incident response minimizing prolonged downtime that can potentially lead to irreparable loss. This book is the first of its kind to address the overall problem of contingency planning rather than focusing on specific tasks of incident response or disaster recovery.