Overwhelmed by all that info?

Know that feeling? All that faraway talk, even in your trusted Spore, about the new 'Information Age' and how it is going to liberate everybody. It might still seem a long way away from the perspective of an ACP agriculturist. And yet, at each stage of our waking, working day, we find ourselves having to deal with information. Sometimes we do not have enough to take a wise decision, in which case the experts call us informationally deprived . At other times we have too much information and are unable to pick out the right bits, in which case we are informationally overloaded . It is a problem faced by any manager in a development organisation, and it is especially for these managers that Mike Powell, himself such a person, put together this dense work on Information Management for Development Organisations. For a reader who is professionally aware of information systems, the logic of libraries, computers and personnel policy as well as what really happens in the village, this is a comforting and informative guide through a sometimes bewildering area. Terms like information architecture , mapping and monitoring and learning organisations rain down on you, but if you can handle that, you will find this book a sound professional companion as you draw up and implement your detailed information policy. There are lighter sections of the book, where Powell shines in communicating common sense. If you want to understand the needs of your user, he says, don t just study them, socialise with them, go to social events, chat don t talk, listen don t gawk. It is a shame that he made some of his messages so hard to get at; they deserve to be shared among more people than the community of 'information professionals'. Information Management for Development Organisations. M Powell. Oxfam GB. 1999. 160 pp. ISBN 0 85598 410 4 US$ 14.95 GBP 8.95 15.75 Oxfam GB 274 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7DZ, UK Fax: +44 1865 313 925 Email: publish@oxfam.org.uk

Bibliographic Details

Main Author:	Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation
Format:	News Item biblioteca
Language:	English
Published:	Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation 2000
Online Access:	https://hdl.handle.net/10568/46888 https://hdl.handle.net/10568/99590
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