Resource Gleaning, From Earlier Times to the Information Age

Inspired by the film documentary The Gleaners and I, the paper defines two senses of gleaning: (1) generally, the collection of items in small quantities, and (2) more specifically, the collection of items missed or rejected during previous harvesting. As an activity, gleaning in both senses is a neglected but essential activity in the solving of problems of lack of resource, especially now in the Information Age. A classic example of the gleaning process is provided by psychoanalysis, which gleans information which would normally be seen as trivial or unacceptable, to be used in the analysis and treatment of a personality disorder. The need to glean information to break secret codes in World War II provided the impetus to create the world's first programmable electronic computer, the Colossus. The invention of the computer has brought in the Information Age, but in so doing, it has created a need for information gleaning. The publishing of research findings on the Internet is discussed and the current status of some gleaning software is