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Making Use of Existing Information

Find out if a community profile has been made in the past by a community organisation, an official body or students. If so, get a copy, and if it is unpublished, ask for permission to use it. If the community profile belongs to the community or a community organisation, offer to help update and improve it for their purposes as well as your own. If an organisation wants a profile arranged in a different way to that suggested in this guide, discuss the situation with your lecturer before you agree to a different format.

If you are updating and improving an existing community profile you must acknowledge this, and include a copy of the old profile when you hand yours in for assessment. If the existing information does not use the headings suggested in this study guide, you can rearrange it in your profile.

Be critically aware of written sources, both unpublished and published. Remember that just because something is written down does not make it true or correct.

Information on the public record includes census data, local government reports, published reports, local newspapers, annual reports and studies and information from published directories. This information is available to anyone, and can be collected without special permission. You should acknowledge the source in a bibliography.

Organisations and government departments which service the community may make information from their records available, provided that confidentiality is respected. Annual reports of organisations are often very useful sources of information. Agency records which are not in the public domain cannot be used without permission.

It is most important to cite all of your sources fully and correctly. In particular, anything which you copy using a photocopier, scanner or by copying into a word processor must be fully acknowledged. An author date reference should appear where the copied material is, with a reference in the bibliography at the end. It is a serious matter to present other people's knowledge or intellectual work as if it is your own. Details of how to do this are in the Faculty Guide to Presentation of Assignments.