Understanding Workplace Information Systems

Institute of Leadership & Management

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781138454071
• eBook ISBN: 9781136350962
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Super series are a set of workbooks to accompany the flexible learning programme specifically designed and developed by the Institute of Leadership & Management (ILM) to support their Level 3 Certificate in First Line Management. The learning content is also closely aligned to the Level 3 S/NVQ in Management. The series consists of 35 workbooks. Each book will map on to a course unit (35 books/units).

Session B

Systems for storing and retrieving information

1 Introduction

These days everyone is on the receiving end of so much information that it's all too easy to lose track of the important bits. The only way to be certain of where to find the information you need is to be systematic about storing it.

That means two things:

sorting and organizing the information into meaningful categories and being consistent about its content;

putting it into the right places promptly and regularly.

There are bound to be problems when information is stored in the wrong place, or in the wrong order – or not stored at all. With so much information coming in important items can easily get lost forever.

That's why you need a system, and being systematic starts with the way you sort and organize your information. Unless information is organized in some way its users will not know where it is and how to retrieve it later when it is needed.

The first parts of this session describe the various systems of classification, indexing and cross-referencing commonly found in organizations: much of this applies to both manual and computer systems. The final part describes how you can organize information on your computer and use its search tools to help you find documents.

2 Organizing information

2.1 Terminology

There is a very big difference between computer terminology and paper-storage terminology.

In manual systems a ‘file’ is simply a physical container such as a lever-arch file. The file contains a collection of separate leaves.

The contents may be leaves of paper, or leaves of plastic acetates or similar. Some of the leaves my contain words while others have only pitures. Others will have both. The key thing is that there are separate leaves.

In computer systems a ‘file’ is a collection of data in the same computer format. For instance you can have a ‘.txt’ file containing text or a ‘.webp’ file containing a picture. (Some computer formats can contain both text and graphics but these can usually only be opened and viewed properly using the computer program that created them. Microsoft Word's ‘.doc’ format is an example.)

To avoid confusion we will use the term ‘folder’ when we are talking about containers for documents, and ‘file’ for individual documents.

2.2 Manual systems

In a manual system, paper documents are generally kept in different folders for different types of information. Information within an individual folder might be divided again into categories and then held in a particular order within each category. If folders are subdivided by topic (customers, employees, and so forth) colour coding is often used to avoid placing information in the right sequence but under the wrong topic.

Activity 15

You have a letter dated 5 August 2003 from Mrs JK Fallone of SDS Interiors Ltd in Barnsley about a contract to redecorate your office. How could this be filed so that it would be easy to retrieve?

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There are various ways in which folders can be classified and structured. Here are some of the many possibilities.

By name – for example letters to a particular person or organization.

By subject matter – for example documents about a particular project, transaction or problem.

By date – all invoices for a particular year, for instance.

By geography – by country, area or city, for example.

By department – for example salary...

Table of contents

• Front cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Series preface
• Unit specification
• Workbook introduction
• Session A Record keeping and storage media
• Session B Systems for storing and retrieving information
• Session C Databases and spreadsheets
• Session D Access control, security and data protection
• Performance checks
• Reflect and review