Organising data

• Organising data


  Accessing data with minimal expenditure of time and effort
• Books have information such as title and author, and occasionally a summary, printed on the cover
• A quick glance at a book's cover will tell you if the book is relevant
• Finding a fact or your favourite section in a book would be a long, difficult task if there was no organisation within the book itself
• Books are organised


  1. Divided into sections and chapters

  2. Grouped related content into chunks

  3. Table of contents listing chapters and sections

  4. Index or glossary for individual words and concepts
• Ways books can be organised in bookstores and libraries

  • Fiction
  • Crime novels
  • British crime
  • Classic crime
  • Historical crime
  • Nordic crime
  • Danish crime novels
  • Icelandic crime novels
• Labelling, indexing and cataloguing information is not unique to books
• Examples of similar schemes developed long before computers


  • Censuses
  • Registers of births and deaths
  • Electoral rolls
  • Manifests
  • Company ledgers
• Database


  Used to store large amounts of data today