Community Information Toolkit

Community information as defined by Pettigrew  (1996, p. 351) is any information that helps citizens with their day-to-day problems and enables them to fully participate as members of their democratic community. It is information pertaining to the availability of human services such as health care, financial assistance, housing, transportation, education and childcare services; as well as information on recreation programs, clubs, community events, and information about all levels of government.

With this definition in mind, I've documented what I see to be important tools that will enable you to create and communicate data that is relevant to your community using the SAcommunity platform .

• Firstly the Standard for Community Information Resource Management (10 pages) refers to all aspects of managing and developing an information resource.
• The SAcommunity Style Guide (pages 7 to 10 of the CI standard) aims to assist users to create clearly and concise entries in SAcommunity, helping us to achieve consistency throughout all listings.
• The SAcommunity Editor Manual (44 pages) contains instructions on a variety of tasks, including how to create an account, how to list an organisation, publishing a directory and using the advanced search tools.
• Table of Contents for Local Community Information Directories.
• To have an understanding of how people are using your information is important. We can run a Google Analytics report on the records that you manage, so that you can see how your information is being accessed. A guide to understanding your Google Analytics report is worth having a look at.

If you still have questions about how to manage your information on SAcommunity, then please, get in touch with us and we'll help you out.

Pettigrew, K. E.  (1996). Nurses' perceptions of their needs for community information Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 37(4), pp. 351-359.