Introduction

Information attributes are everyday concepts and part of our everyday language when discussing information. When dealing with patient information Ann, our cardiologist, will care about issues such as the novelty of any information representing change in her patient's condition, its accuracy and the quality of the information she is receiving. Novelty can be assessed by the time of the information, recorded in a standard format that all medical staff use and understand, accuracy may be judged by knowledge of how the information was created and quality of information may be judged by who provided the information or how useful the information is in deciding how to treat her patients. Ann will also have to deal with various genres of information, such as patient records, heart rhythm traces, temperature charts, etc., which can be used for different purposes and to make different decisions. Many information attributes require high levels of domain knowledge to be used correctly; part of Ann's professional training dealt with how to read these documents and how to use them to treat her patients.

Our lawyer Johan will also interact with many types of information and care about issues of bias in the information, the degree to which his information can be verified with respect to other sources of information and whether he has confidence in his information source. In presenting evidence to the court he will need to consider whether his evidence is clear, if it provides tangible facts and whether it is consistent with other information being presented. Johan also needs to care about whether his own legal knowledge is up to date, whether his interpretation of the law is consistent with other lawyers and whether he is translating specialised information in such a way that his clients and the jury will have the ability to understand the information he is providing.

Liila, our journalist, has to deal with many sources of information, and she will also care about novelty of information and its accuracy but she also has concerns over whether the information is recent, whether her sources are authoritative, whether the information is sufficiently specific to her story and the affective nature of the information on her potential readers.