2.2 Types of Information

It is important that the information source you choose matches your question in terms of content and form. This requires that you can differentiate between the different types of information. Some examples of types of information are:

Current information
Up-to-date information (news, trends, opinion) addresses recent developments and is intended to stay up to date with what is currently going on in a field.

Background Information
It is important to know exactly what a discipline involves and what relevant concepts and theories mean. This is background information that can be found in (hand)books, professional literature, journals, other publications, and databases.

Factual information
Consists of fixed, measurable, objective data, supplementary statistics, business information, information about countries.

Bibliographical information
Bibliographical information can be found in catalogues of libraries or literature lists. You will only find the description of the data (and in the case of a library catalogue also the location) and not the complete text.

Academic informationImage: Scientific Journal
Academic information is published in academic journals or books, often in English. You can recognise academic literature by several characteristics:


This section includes explanations about where to find different types of information.