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One important kind of sorting is arranging items of information in sequence according to some pre-defined ordering, e.g. when one sorts the books in a library alphabetically by title, subject or author. The problem of how to change the order of lists according to given criteria is simply called '''sorting''' in [[computer science]]. It is one of extensively researched subjects in it; see [[sort algorithm]].
The main purpose of sorting information is to optimise its usefulness for specific tasks. In general, there are two ways of sorting information: '''by category''' e.g. a shopping catalogue where items are grouped together under headings such as 'home', 'sport & leisure', 'women's clothes' etc. and '''in a hierarchy''' according to some property e.g. from cheapest to most expensive. Richard Saul Wurman, in his book '''Information Anxiety''', proposes '''Alphabetical''', by '''Location''' and by '''Time''' as being the most common sorting methods (these are actually special cases of category
Often information is sorted using different methods at different levels of abstraction: e.g. the UK telephone directories which are sorted by ___location, by category (business or residential) and then alphabetically. New media still subscribe to these basic sorting methods: e.g. a Google search returns a list of web pages in a hierarchical list based on its own scoring system for how closely they match the search criteria (from closest match downwards).
==Physical sorting processes==
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