Was sifting through my bookmarks/blog/paper collections on personal information management for a workshop… Found some papers I haven’t seen before and finally got a bit better feel for PIM research
(at least between CSCW/HCI crowd).
I’m going to blog some papers, but if you don’t want to wait check PIM+papers del.icio.us bookmarks
And, an overview of PIM challenges from Personal Information Management Group Report by William Jones and David Maier:
- Information is fragmented; so too, is the study of PIM
- How do we capture information from our lives away from the computer (and other electronic devices)?
- How do we keep others from capturing and disseminating our information?
- Where do the bits and pieces go?
- Who owns the information in the workplace?
- How can an employee’s knowledge of the information space be captured for later use?
- How do we know what is working and what isn’t?
- How can we make more effective use of existing tools and technology?
A lot of these applies to personal KM as well (and don’t ask me about relations between PIM and PKM, read the role of information in knowledge sharing instead :) My favourite piece at the moment:
Evaluation of new PIM tools and techniques is very difficult for a number of reasons: a.) the tool/technique may help with one aspect of PIM but hinder others. It is necessary to evaluate the overall effect of a tool/technique on an individual’s ability to manage information. b.) PIM tools/techniques cannot be easily evaluated in a laboratory setting. Management of information occurs against a backdrop of other information and everyday tasks. A synthetic benchmark or common information collection can’t very well play the role of an arbitrary subject’s personal information space. c.) People adapt and their needs change. An accurate picture of a tool or technique’s utility emerges only over an extended period of evaluation.
Tags: methodology, papers, personal knowledge managementArchived version of this entry is available at http://blog.mathemagenic.com/2004/12/16.html#a1458; comments are here.
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