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Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools

Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools
Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools
In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings.
personal information management, notetaking, information scraps
1-46
Bernstein, Michael
151e732c-ccc0-4c9b-9cf5-f6173588a808
Van Kleek, Max
d91d9d82-83cc-477b-943f-eaba8b8fdc0c
Karger, David
7ecc1fdb-fc2f-41fe-87a3-55f7f4ec81ce
schraefel, mc
ac304659-1692-47f6-b892-15113b8c929f
Bernstein, Michael
151e732c-ccc0-4c9b-9cf5-f6173588a808
Van Kleek, Max
d91d9d82-83cc-477b-943f-eaba8b8fdc0c
Karger, David
7ecc1fdb-fc2f-41fe-87a3-55f7f4ec81ce
schraefel, mc
ac304659-1692-47f6-b892-15113b8c929f

Bernstein, Michael, Van Kleek, Max, Karger, David and schraefel, mc (2008) Information scraps: how and why information eludes our personal information management tools. ACM Transactions on Information Systems, 26 (4), 1-46. (doi:10.1145/1402256.1402263).

Record type: Article

Abstract

In this paper we describe information scraps -- a class of personal information whose content is scribbled on Post-it notes, scrawled on corners of random sheets of paper, buried inside the bodies of e-mail messages sent to ourselves, or typed haphazardly into text files. Information scraps hold our great ideas, sketches, notes, reminders, driving directions, and even our poetry. We define information scraps to be the body of personal information that is held outside of its natural or We have much still to learn about these loose forms of information capture. Why are they so often held outside of our traditional PIM locations and instead on Post-its or in text files? Why must we sometimes go around our traditional PIM applications to hold on to our scraps, such as by e-mailing ourselves? What are information scraps' role in the larger space of personal information management, and what do they uniquely offer that we find so appealing? If these unorganized bits truly indicate the failure of our PIM tools, how might we begin to build better tools? We have pursued these questions by undertaking a study of 27 knowledge workers. In our findings we describe information scraps from several angles: their content, their location, and the factors that lead to their use, which we identify as ease of capture, flexibility of content and organization, and avilability at the time of need. We also consider the personal emotive responses around scrap management. We present a set of design considerations that we have derived from the analysis of our study results. We present our work on an application platform, jourknow, to test some of these design and usability findings.

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More information

Published date: September 2008
Keywords: personal information management, notetaking, information scraps
Organisations: Agents, Interactions & Complexity

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 266461
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/266461
PURE UUID: dc6f85ca-81d3-4bd0-98d1-1bc6c4c8d5f0
ORCID for mc schraefel: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-9061-7957

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Date deposited: 31 Jul 2008 09:40
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:16

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Contributors

Author: Michael Bernstein
Author: Max Van Kleek
Author: David Karger
Author: mc schraefel ORCID iD

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