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questions:
1. What are the information needs and information uses of rural African
women?
2. Which sources of information do rural African women use to acquire
information?
3.2 What is Information?
A number of definitions lend themselves to the concept of information given
its intangible nature. Most dictionaries define information as knowledge,
intelligence, facts or data.
The fact that information is, by its very nature, intangible, makes it all the
more difficult to define. Hence, in-order to understand its meaning and
subsequent role in development, this study has found it necessary to
illustrate varying interpretations by disparate authors.
Earlier doctrines by authors such as Katz (1967:14) describe information as
the difference between knowing and not knowing, between being faced with
a number of possibilities, and between knowing the one that actually
prevails. Webster (1995:27) takes on a two-prong approach, the first of
which defines information as being meaningful, having a subject, and being
intelligent, whilst providing instruction about something or someone. In the
second approach, Webster distinguishes information from this semantic
concept and instead defines it "as a quantity which is measured in bits and
defined in terms of the probability of occurrences of symbois. It is a
definition derived from and usefui to the engineer whose interest is with the
storage and transmission of symbols, the minimum index of which is on/off
(yes/no or 0/1)"
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