Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management

Book description

Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management is the first comprehensive book on new 'favorite child' of R&D at Microsoft and elsewhere, personal information management (PIM). It provides a comprehensive overview of PIM as both a study and a practice of the activities people do, and need to be doing, so that information can work for them in their daily lives.

It explores what good and better PIM looks like, and how to measure improvements. It presents key questions to consider when evaluating any new PIM informational tools or systems.

This book is designed for R&D professionals in HCI, data mining and data management, information retrieval, and related areas, plus developers of tools and software that include PIM solutions.

  • Focuses exclusively on one of the most interesting and challenging problems in today's world
  • Explores what good and better PIM looks like, and how to measure improvements
  • Presents key questions to consider when evaluating any new PIM informational tools or systems

Table of contents

  1. Cover image
  2. Title page
  3. Table of Contents
  4. The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Interactive Technologies
  5. The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Multimedia Information and Systems
  6. Copyright
  7. Dedication
  8. Credits
  9. Preface
  10. Contributors
  11. FOUNDATIONS
    1. Chapter 1: A study and a practice
      1. 1.1 Keeping found things found
      2. 1.2 An ideal and the reality
      3. 1.3 A brief history of PIM
      4. 1.4 Who benefits from better PIM and how?
      5. 1.5 A study and a practice
      6. 1.6 Looking forward: A map for this book
    2. Chapter 2: A personal space of information
      1. 2.1 Starting out
      2. 2.2 What is information to us?
      3. 2.3 How is information personal?
      4. 2.4 The information item and its form
      5. 2.5 Defining a personal space of information
      6. 2.6 Making sense of the PSI
      7. 2.7 Looking back, looking forward
    3. Chapter 3: A framework for personal information management
      1. 3.1 Starting out
      2. 3.2 Perspectives on personal information management
      3. 3.3 PIM activities to map between information and need
      4. 3.4 PIM-related activities and PIM-related areas
      5. 3.5 Weaving PIM activities together
      6. 3.6 Looking back, looking forward
  12. ACTIVITIES
    1. Chapter 4: Finding and re-finding: From need to information
      1. 4.1 Starting out
      2. 4.2 Getting oriented
      3. 4.3 Everyday finding: Death by a thousand look-ups
      4. 4.4 Finding is multistep
      5. 4.5 The limitations in ideal dialogs of finding
      6. 4.6 Wayfinding through the PSI
      7. 4.7 Looking back, looking forward
    2. Chapter 5: Keeping and organizing: From information to need
      1. 5.1 Starting out
      2. 5.2 Getting oriented
      3. 5.3 Everyday keeping and organizing: To each his own
      4. 5.4 Keeping is multifaceted
      5. 5.5 The limitations of future perfect visions
      6. 5.6 PICing our battles
      7. 5.7 Looking back, looking forward
    3. Chapter 6: Maintaining for now and for later
      1. 6.1 Starting out
      2. 6.2 Getting oriented
      3. 6.3 Maintaining for now
      4. 6.4 Maintaining for later
      5. 6.5 Maintaining for our lives and beyond
      6. 6.6 Looking back, looking forward
    4. Chapter 7: Managing privacy and the flow of information
      1. 7.1 Starting out
      2. 7.2 Getting oriented
      3. 7.3 Managing the outflow
      4. 7.4 Managing the inflow
      5. 7.5 Staying in the flow
      6. 7.6 Looking back, looking forward
    5. Chapter 8: Measuring and evaluating
      1. 8.1 Starting out
      2. 8.2 Getting oriented
      3. 8.3 A yardstick for measuring PIM practice elements
      4. 8.4 What can research tell us about methods of measuring and evaluating in our practices of PIM?
      5. 8.5 Measuring and evaluating in real life
      6. 8.6 Can self-study of PIM practices contribute to the larger study of PIM?
      7. 8.7 Looking back, looking forward
    6. Chapter 9: Making sense of things
      1. 9.1 Starting out
      2. 9.2 Getting oriented
      3. 9.3 Making sense as outcome vs. activity
      4. 9.4 Making sense of things as a PIM activity
      5. 9.5 Methods for making sense
      6. 9.6 Looking back, looking forward
  13. SOLUTIONS
    1. Chapter 10: Email disappears?
      1. 10.1 Starting out: Is email a very successful failure?
      2. 10.2 PIM problems in email: The one–two punch
      3. 10.3 PIM activities in email
      4. 10.4 Future visions of email
      5. 10.5 Looking back, looking forward
    2. Chapter 11: Search gets personal
      1. 11.1 Starting out
      2. 11.2 Search-as-interaction
      3. 11.3 Search-as-technology
      4. 11.4 Making search more personal
      5. 11.5 Wayfinding and search
      6. 11.6 Looking back, looking forward
    3. Chapter 12: PIM on the go
      1. 12.1 Starting out
      2. 12.2 Getting oriented
      3. 12.3 A foreseeable future
      4. 12.4 What to expect from PIM-on-the-go?
      5. 12.5 Looking back, looking forward
    4. Chapter 13: PIM on the Web
      1. 13.1 Starting out
      2. 13.2 Getting oriented
      3. 13.3 A foreseeable future?
      4. 13.4 What to expect from PIM-on-the-Web
      5. 13.5 Looking back, looking forward
  14. CONCLUSIONS
    1. Chapter 14: Bringing the pieces together
      1. 14.1 Starting out
      2. 14.2 Getting oriented
      3. 14.3 Stories of synergy
      4. 14.4 Kinds of integration
      5. 14.5 Enabling unifications
      6. 14.6 Looking back, looking forward
    2. Chapter 15: Finding our way in(to) the future
      1. 15.1 Starting out
      2. 15.2 To the future
      3. 15.3 In the future
      4. 15.4 On our way
  15. References
  16. Index

Product information

  • Title: Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management
  • Author(s): William Jones
  • Release date: July 2010
  • Publisher(s): Morgan Kaufmann
  • ISBN: 9780080554150