Introduction to information systems T. Cornford, M. Shaikh is1 060 2013

1.9.4 Newspapers, magazines and trade papers
You should make a habit of consulting weekly and monthly journals as 
well as newspapers. Most serious newspapers have regular supplements 
or sections devoted to technology and computers, and you should become 
a regular reader. Most countries have some local publications devoted to 
computers and information systems, and these can provide very useful 
materials for study. Such publications will include news of the local and 
global information technology industries, examples or case studies of 
systems in use and discussion of systems development practices. A useful 
aid to your study on this course will be to keep a scrapbook of newspaper 
and magazine articles that relate to information systems and to review this 
material from time to time.
Hundreds of computer magazines are found on newsagents’ shelves. 
Most are aimed at the home computer user and, as such, are of relatively 
little use for this subject. The magazines below, in contrast, all provide 
some coverage about computers and information systems within business 
organisations – the main focus of this subject.
• The Economist, UK: while this is not a computer magazine it does 
contain regular articles on aspects of the computer industry, national 
policies relating to computers and telecommunications and issues of 
organisational use of technology. A couple of times each year, they also 
publish special supplements on some aspect of ICT.
• Datamation, InformationWeek, CIO magazine, USA: these magazines, 
aimed at information systems’ managers, report on many issues of 
effective use of information technology in organisations. There are 
websites for the magazines (noted below) from which articles can be 
downloaded.
• Computing, Computer Weekly, UK: Both of these weekly papers contain 
a mix of industry news, articles on particular organisations and 
descriptions of new and interesting developments. Other countries will 
have similar publications related to their own national marketplace. 
When reading materials such as those listed here, you should spread 
your effort over issues of technology itself and issues related to the 
effective (or ineffective) use of the technology in organisations. It bears 
repeating once again that this subject intends not to study information and 
communications technologies for their own sake, but to better understand 

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IS1060 Introduction to information systems
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what they can achieve and how they can be exploited within business 
organisations, public administration and society as a whole.