Baby Bargains

According to Buckland’s journal Information as Thing, information is situational. As such, it must be useful to a user in a particular situation to be considered relevant. The book Baby Bargains is both useful and relevant to all first-time parents in preparation for the upcoming addition to their household by providing guidance on how and where to buy quality baby necessities at a reasonable cost. Baby Bargains was first published and made available to the public in 1994 and has experienced an extended shelf life due to its updated editions.

This now well-known work entered the information lifecycle some 13 years earlier destined to be updated and adapted for years to come. Baby Bargains has metamorphasized and gone through multiple adaptations with a companion television talk show and the addition of a website and blog. The Baby Bargains concept is a prime example of the dissemination, retrieval and use of relevant information. To understand its progression through the information lifecycle it is helpful to examine how it fills an end user’s need, the birth of the first edition and subsquent publishing history as well as its eventual transformation into a website.

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Need My initial encounter with Baby Bargains occurred during my pregnancy in July of 2005, when I was given the book by a friend. Since it was the first child for my husband and myself, we were excited but at the same time apprehensive over our lack of knowledge. There are literally millions of couples with the same need for knowledge, as evidenced by the extreme popularity of nonfiction books regarding pregnancy, childbirth and preparation for a new baby. Creation Denise and Alan Fields, who co-wrote Baby Bargains, were first time parents at one time, too.

Inspired by the birth of their own sons Ben and Jack, the Fields launched a consumer crusade to find the best deals for new parents and ultimately published Baby Bargains. Baby Bargains is a well-researched, comprehensive resource for parents-to-be. The authors combined their own experience with extensive investigation and interviews with more than a thousand first-time parents across the country to compile the information presented in the book. It provides insights into which baby products are top rated and which are not recommended due to price and/or dearth of function.

Baby Bargains is organized into chapters categorized by type of product. Each chapter contains a list of items necessary for the expectant parent with easy-to-read charts that allows users to compare these products in terms of price, quality, brand name, and durability. The charts include a summary and brief explanation of the content of an item in an compact, uncomplicated format that is clear and provides an easy way for users to visualize the comparisons. According to Robert Taylor’s “Value Added Model”, this book adds ACCESS 3 (subject summary) value by using charts.

The chapters and their corresponding charts are quite comprehensive yet ergonomic for the average consumer. Publishing and dissemination Since the first edition of Baby Bargains was published in 1994, the popularity of the book garnered nearly instant notoriety for the Fields. The list of commercial marketing appearances the authors have enjoyed include features on Oprah, NBC’s Dateline, ABC’s 20/20, The Today Show as well as newspaper and magazine articles written about the couple and their book. Print editions of Baby Bargains now exceed 700,000 copies.

In order to keep the information current, seven editions have been created with the addition of new products and updates on existing items. Revisions include current product values as well as reliability and validity results of the products tested. The authors strive to keep Baby Bargains as up-to-date as possible; about 30 – 40% of the content changes with each edition. These updates ensure the book remains current and a valuable resource to the end user. Retrieval and use According to Trent Hill’s lecture on Knowledge Organization, metadata refers to document attributes, document structure, and relations between documents.

Several pieces of metadata are attached to the book and website of Baby Bargains. The metadata used to describe the book’s attributes include the title, authors (the Fields are well-known consumer writers), date, edition, description of illustrations, and call number. The website’s metadata is the web domain name (www. babybargains. com) and the fact that it is based on the Baby Bargains print edition. Modification and transformation In 1996, www. babybargains. com was formed to be a companion to, and include information from, the book.

When viewed within the FRBR model, Baby Bargains encompasses a complex maze of works, expressions, manifestations, and items. Baby Bargains the book is a work and the companion website is an additional work; each has a unique theme and data. There is one example of an expression of the book in its publication. The book has not been translated into other languages but each edition is published by Windsor Peak Press. There are seven manifestations of the book in the form of its prior updated editions, which are published roughly every two years.

The Baby Bargains website consists of two overt expressions. One of these is the information that paralells the book and the other expression is the blog which provides current news on baby products including safety recalls and price changes. Bonus material and a message board for users’ interaction complete the comprehensive nature of the website. When each new edition of Baby Bargains is released, registered website users are encouraged to read the updated version of the book in order to obtain the latest information due to changes of content.

This has worked well for the Fields as being an inexpensive yet effective method for informing users about updates and and changes to the print version. A blog link was also added to the website, giving the authors yet another forum for advertising new editions and updates in a timely manner. A message board on the site links users and provides a forum for asking questions and receiving answers, opening the lines of communication between parties with a shared interest. Collection Baby Bargains is a piece from the collections of both public and personal libraries.

It is also available through the University of Washington library catalog system. The print book is not owned by the University library nor the summit libraries although it can be obtained through interlibrary loan. According to Matt Saxton’s lecture on “What is a Collection? ”, a collection has certain information for certain audiences. Baby Bargains is not an ordinary part of an academic library’s collection since these institutions do not collect what is considered to be a consumer book. Searching for this work

I obtained the work Baby Bargains very easily – through a friend of mine during my pregnancy. It is available in a large variety of bookstores and can be located without any searching effort or retrieval process. Editions of Baby Bargains starting with the 4th and continuing through the current edition are easily accessed through the public library catalog system where they can be directly compared side by side. The Baby Bargains website and blog comes up quickly and easily within the first two listings by using the online search engine Google. Closing

This assignment caused me to think in fresh ways about how information is disseminated and updated. I feel I was challenged to examine the meaning and purpose of metadata in information systems, as well as the process by which information becomes a work, an expression, and a manifestation. The information lifecycle provides a valuable framework for understanding information such as that which is contained in Baby Bargains throughout its development and as a whole. It is particulalry useful as a foundation upon which to build my study of library and information science.

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