What is the difference between Data and Information?

A pile of documents or an album of pictures depicts many aspects of genealogy, but someone has to interpret them and explain how they relate to other family information.

• Data are raw, unprocessed facts without context. Data can be names, numbers, text, objects in photos, or any other type of input that hasn’t been analyzed or interpreted. For example, a list of dates and temperatures is data in weather reports. Another example is the names of people and the location of the event.
• Information is data that has been processed, organized, and arranged in a way that adds meaning and context to a narrative, making it useful for decision-making. In genealogy, it tells us more about our ancestors.

Converting the data into information is crucial to success, no matter what your goals are. If your goal is to identify your family’s origins, the names, dates, and place names we find on documents are data that we can interpret and organize into the research notes that eventually will help us find our ancestors’ birthplace in the “old country.” Finding these documents gives us the information needed to tell our ancestor’s story and helps preserve their memory.