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Toward understanding short-term personal information preservation: A study of backup strategies of end users
Journal of The Association For Information Science and Technology
Abstract
The segment of companies providing storage services and hardware for end users and small businesses has been growing in the past few years. Cloud storage, personal network-attached storage (NAS), and external hard drives are more affordable than ever before and one would think that backing up personal digital information is a straightforward process nowadays. Despite this, small group studies and corporate surveys show the opposite. In this paper we present the results from a quantitative and qualitative survey of 319 participants about how they back up their personal computers and restore personal information in case of computer failures. The results show that the majority of users do manual, selective, and noncontinuous backups, rely on a set of planned and unplanned backups (as a consequence of other activities), have inadequate knowledge about possible solutions and implications of using known solutions, and so on. The study also reveals that around a fifth of all computers are not backed up, and a quarter of most important files and a third of most important folders at the time of the survey could not be (fully) restored in the event of computer failure. Based on the results, several implications for practice and research are presented.
... In the context of FM, this includes the computer or hardware device, hard disks, file manager software (sometimes called a file browser -the most popular of which are File Explorer in Windows and Finder in Mac OS), windowing environment (if any), and the operating system (OS). For example, limited disk space and even limited cloud storage space can force users to decide what to store locally and what to archive externally (Barreau & Nardi, 1995;Kljun et al., 2016), and the available views onto files provided by the file manager may influence how files are organised and retrieved. Though the exact differences between the software relevant to FM have yet to be thoroughly catalogued -for example, the differing OSes and their respective file manager applications allow, encourage, discourage, and forbid different interactions with files -it has been suggested by ancillary analyses in several studies (Agrawal et al., 2007;Barreau & Nardi, 1995;Massey, TenBrook, et al., 2014) that such differences may affect users' file storage, management, retrieval, and sharing behaviour. ...
... ,Bergman, Whittaker, and Frishman (2018),Berlin, Jeffries, O'Day, Paepcke, and Wharton (1993),Capra, Vardell, and Brennan (2014), Čopič Pucihar,Kljun, Mariani, and Dix (2016),Dourish, Lamping, and Rodden (1999), M. L. Johnson, Bellovin, Reeder, and Schechter (2009),Khan, Hyun, Kanich, and Ur (2018),Mark and Prinz (1997),Massey, Lennig, and Whittaker (2014),Tang, Brubaker, and Marshall (2013), A.Voida, Olson, and Olson (2013),Wulf (1997), H.Zhang and Twidale (2012) ...
... Jones, Bruce, and Dumais (2001), W. Jones et al. (2015), W. Jones, Dumais, and Bruce (2002), Kaptelinin (1996), Kearns, Frey, Tomer, and Alman (2014), Khoo et al. (2007), Kljun, Mariani, and Dix (2016), C. C. Marshall, Wobber, Ramasubramanian, and Terry (2012), C. Marshall and Tang (2012), Nardi, Anderson, and Erickson (1995), Ravasio, Schär, and Krueger (2004), Santosa and Wigdor (2013), Tang, Brubaker, and Marshall (2013), Organising creating subfolders, moving and deleting files and folders Bergman, Whittaker, Sanderson, Nachmias, and Ramamoorthy (2010), Berlin, Jeffries, O'Day, Paepcke, and Wharton (1993), Boardman and Sasse (2004), Chaudhry, Rehman, and Al-Sughair (2015), Gonçalves and Jorge (2003), Hardof-Jaffe, Hershkovitz, Abu-Kishk, Bergman, and Nachmias (2009b), Henderson (2005Henderson ( , 2011, Henderson and Srinivasan (2009), Hicks, Dong, Palmer, and McAlpine (2008, W. Jones, Phuwanartnurak, Gill, and Bruce (2005), Kamaruddin and Dix (2010), Kamaruddin, Dix, and Martin (2006), Kaptelinin (1996), Malone (1983), Oh (2012aOh ( , 2012bOh ( , 2013Oh ( , 2017, Oh and Belkin (2014), Paré (2011), Ravasio, Schär, and Krueger (2004), Trullemans and Signer (2014a), Whitham and Cruickshank (2017), H. Zhang and Hu (2014) Retrieving navigating, searching, tagging files and folders Barreau and Nardi (1995), Benn et al. (2015), Bergman, Beyth-Marom, Nachmias, Gradovitch, and Whittaker (2008) ...
Computer users spend time every day interacting with digital files and folders, including downloading, moving, naming, navigating to, searching for, sharing, and deleting them. Such file management has been the focus of many studies across various fields, but has not been explicitly acknowledged nor made the focus of dedicated review. In this article we present the first dedicated review of this topic and its research, synthesizing more than 230 publications from various research domains to establish what is known and what remains to be investigated, particularly by examining the common motivations, methods, and findings evinced by the previously furcate body of work. We find three typical research motivations in the literature reviewed: understanding how and why users store, organize, retrieve, and share files and folders, understanding factors that determine their behavior, and attempting to improve the user experience through novel interfaces and information services. Relevant conceptual frameworks and approaches to designing and testing systems are described, and open research challenges and the significance for other research areas are discussed. We conclude that file management is a ubiquitous, challenging, and relatively unsupported activity that invites and has received attention from several disciplines and has broad importance for topics across information science.
... The use of different devices was found among people for backing up personal information. These devices included personal computer and USB devices (Sinn et al., 2011(Sinn et al., , 2017, the use of cloud services (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Kljun et al., 2016;Reyes, 2016;Sinn et al., 2017) and external storage devices (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Kljun et al., 2016;Reyes, 2016;Sinn et al., 2011Sinn et al., , 2017. Self-emailing, use of different locations of same device (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Reyes, 2016;Sinn et al., 2017), and making backup from smartphones to computers (Zhang and Liu, 2015) were also observed. ...
... The use of different devices was found among people for backing up personal information. These devices included personal computer and USB devices (Sinn et al., 2011(Sinn et al., , 2017, the use of cloud services (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Kljun et al., 2016;Reyes, 2016;Sinn et al., 2017) and external storage devices (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Kljun et al., 2016;Reyes, 2016;Sinn et al., 2011Sinn et al., , 2017. Self-emailing, use of different locations of same device (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Reyes, 2016;Sinn et al., 2017), and making backup from smartphones to computers (Zhang and Liu, 2015) were also observed. ...
... Studies also reported that people used to get backup in printed format (Becker and Nogues, 2012;Zhao et al., 2019). People used different or multiple devices for archiving or maintaining information (Molazadeh et al., 2017;Zhao et al., 2019) and created manual, semiautomatic, and automatic backup (Kljun et al., 2016). ...
The purpose of this study is to explore Personal Digital Archiving, and its practices, reasons, and challenges in desktop and in ubiquitous environment such as desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones or smartphones, tablets, and cloud services. Moreover, it is also aimed to develop a model of Personal Digital Archiving process for desktop and ubiquitous devices. This study used Preferred Reporting Items for the Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines for searching and devising, and inclusion and exclusion criteria. The Search was conducted from selected repositories, databases, and core journals, potentially containing studies related with Personal Digital Archiving. Consequently, 21 studies were included through identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion of studies process. It was found that people used multiple devices such as mobile phones or smartphones along with other devices. It was established that people had also used cloud services with different devices including computers and smartphones or tablets for Personal Digital Archiving. Five major categories of individuals’ Personal Digital Archiving practices, that is, backup, replication or duplication, reorganizing and updating, cleaning or removing, and migration of information were found. Moreover, emotional motives, technological causes, alternative access, easy retrieval, and task completion were the reasons to adopt Personal Digital Archiving. On the basis of findings of selected studies, researchers developed a four steps model of Personal Digital Archiving process, consisting of initiation, identification, action, and evaluation constructs. Personal Digital Archiving challenges were also identified such as the individuals had to face through the use of desktop and ubiquitous devices including technical, fragmented and overloaded information, lack of training and expertise, and psychological and miscellaneous challenges. Personal Digital Archiving process model is based on the extracted data from studies published worldwide, and it is useful for both desktop and ubiquitous devices with reference to Personal Information Management context. The findings of the study will be helpful for software designers and android application developers to design and develop users’ centered Personal Information Management software.
... We use the expression data preservation to indicate subset of what is commonly thought of as data management, as others have done before [21,25]. Challenging traditional views on information management, Whittaker [47] argues that users experience an information curation cycle. ...
... It has been found that, in general, users take a neglectful approach to preservation: they do not think carefully about longterm preservation expecting data to somehow survive without planning [26], they have inconsistent strategies for short-term preservation with a mix of "planned" (e.g., doing a manual backup onto an external hard drive) and "unplanned" methods (e.g., emailing documents to other people as part of other activities) [21], they make no clear distinction between shortterm and long-term preservation, using terms like "storing", "archiving" and "backing up" interchangeably [21,26,37]. ...
... It has been found that, in general, users take a neglectful approach to preservation: they do not think carefully about longterm preservation expecting data to somehow survive without planning [26], they have inconsistent strategies for short-term preservation with a mix of "planned" (e.g., doing a manual backup onto an external hard drive) and "unplanned" methods (e.g., emailing documents to other people as part of other activities) [21], they make no clear distinction between shortterm and long-term preservation, using terms like "storing", "archiving" and "backing up" interchangeably [21,26,37]. ...
Digital data, from texts to files and mobile applications, has become a pervasive component of our society. With seemingly unlimited storage in the cloud at their disposal, how do people approach data preservation, deciding what to keep and discard? We interviewed 23 participants with diverse backgrounds, asking them about their perceived digital data: what "stuff" they kept through the years, why, how they used it, and what they considered important. In an iterative analysis process, we uncovered a spectrum of tendencies that drive preservation strategies, with two extremes: hoarding (where participants accumulated large amounts of data, even if considered of little value) and minimalism (where they kept as little as possible, regularly cleaning their data). We contrast and compare the two extremes of the spectrum, characterize their nuanced nature, and discuss how our categorization compares to previously reported behaviors such as filing and piling, email cleaners and keepers. We conclude with broad implications for shaping technology.
... The third part of the questionnaire was related to PIM practices (information finding and re-finding, information keeping, information organizing and maintaining information). The statements for personal innovativeness were adapted from Agarwal and Prasad (1998); PEOU was adapted from the studies (Davis, 1989;Ismail, 2016); the statements of mobile self-efficacy were adapted (Wang and Wang, 2008); and PIM constructs were developed from literature, mainly from the studies Bruce et al, 2004;Donepudi, 2014;Kljun et al., 2016;Sinn et al., 2017;Yasmin et al., 2020;Zhang and Liu, 2015;Zhang, 2016). ...
Purpose
Although, smartphones have facilitated users to keep their personal information, nonetheless, less has been investigated about factors affecting personal information management (PIM) practices. Therefore, this study aims to investigate how personal innovativeness, perceived ease of use (PEOU) and mobile self-efficacy affect PIM (e.g. finding/re-finding, keeping, organizing and maintaining) practices.
Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative research design was used in this study. The authors collected data from 222 students of information management from public sector universities using a questionnaire. PLS modeling technique was used to analyze data.
Findings
The authors noted that personal innovativeness significantly impacts finding/refinding information, whereas it insignificantly affects keeping, organizing and maintaining information practices. In addition, smartphone PEOU significantly influences information finding and refinding, information keeping and organizing information, whereas insignificantly influences information maintaining. Moreover, mobile self-efficacy was noted to be significantly associated with finding and refinding information, information keeping, information organizing and information maintaining.
Originality/value
This research is an important contribution to the body of existing literature, as it proposed an integrated model based on constructs extracted from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), Social Cognitive Theory, personal innovativeness and PIM. This study also has practical significance because the findings of this study would be helpful for smartphone application developers and LIS school directors to design programs for information literacy.
... The Two measurement scales were used in this study for data collection:(1) a scale for PDA practices; and (2) a scale for mobile self-efficacy.The PDA scale was developed with the help of the literature mainly from the studies ofKljun et al. (2016),Sinn et al. (2017),Zhang and Liu (2015), andZhao et al. (2019), as well as other relevant studies ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the impact of mobile self-efficacy on personal digital archiving (PDA) practices of undergraduate students.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used a quantitative research design for achieving the objectives. The population consisted of undergraduate students from public sector universities (the top five) of Punjab, Pakistan, listed in the Higher Education Commission recognized general universities. The data were analysed by using SmartPLS, mobile self-efficacy was the independent variable that consisted of two constructs (basic mobile phone operations and using the internet and emails). PDA practices was the dependent variable (information backup, clearing and deleting).
Findings
The analysis consisted of two major parts: first the assessment of measurement model and second the structural equation modelling analysis. A significant impact of mobile self-efficacy (basic mobile phone operations, using internet and email) was found on all the sub-constructs (information backup, information clearing and information deleting) of PDA practices. However, using internet and email has no significant impact on the information clearing practices of undergraduate students of Pakistani universities.
Originality/value
This study is a valuable addition to the extant literature because no comprehensive research has been carried out on the impact of mobile self-efficacy and PDA through mobile phones. It also contributes theoretically in the form of the development of a validated instrument on mobile-based PDA. Additionally, it possesses practical value for information literacy instruction programs.
... who never made backups, and only 12% did so weekly, or more often [35]. In a convenience sample of 319 international participants, 20% of computers did not have a backup, and the existing backups were not necessarily complete [26]. ...
... Collection size, i.e., the number of files in one's personal archive, has also been proposed as an explanation for organizational differences, with larger collections being inherently harder to organize [39,40]. Finally, operating system [41] and PIM tools [27,[42][43][44] have been suggested as influencing how files are organized. ...
Two studies explore whether people’s digital filing behaviors are affected by emotional factors when engaging in personal information management (PIM). Cognitive science research shows that people’s information categorization behaviors are mood-dependent, so that positive moods induce larger, more inclusive organizational categories, whereas negative moods elicit more fine-grained organization. However, such mood-dependent organization has not been directly studied in the context of PIM. Our first, naturalistic study examines relations between people’s overall filing habits and a personality trait, neuroticism, which is commonly associated with negative mood. Our results reveal the expected mood-dependency effects; participants who report more prevalent negative mood patterns when surveyed, also create different organizational structures. Overall, they make more folders that contain fewer files and store these in deeper folder structures. The second, experimental study directly manipulated mood and examined how this affects organization of a controlled file collection. Again as predicted, participants experiencing negative moods created significantly more folders containing fewer files, and there was a trending effect of negative mood on folder depth. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for PIM arising from these novel results.
... Indeed, observed collections typically occupied 33 to 232 GB of storage space; while this is far larger than the largest average collection size reported a decade ago (2.5 GB) [32], the upper bound of 232 GB suggests that most collections can currently be backed up onto a modestly-sized (i.e., 250 GB) external hard drive. These moderate collection sizes also suggest that cases of participants' files being too big to easily back up [41] or transfer between computers [11] are likely atypical. In addition to storage capacity, issues with Web-based storage may discourage users from uploading their collections; despite viewing Web storage like the cloud as a place for personal and shared files [45], users continue to have conceptual issues and interaction difficulties with such storage [45]. ...
Although many challenges of managing computer files have been identified in past studies -- and many alternative prototypes made -- the scale and structure of personal file collections remain relatively unknown. We studied 348 such collections, and found they are typically considerably larger in scale (30-190 thousand files) and structure (folder trees twice taller and many times wider) than previously thought, which suggests files and folders are used now more than ever despite advances in Web storage, desktop search, and tagging. Data along many measures within and across collections were log normally distributed, indicating that personal collections resemble imbalanced, group-made collections and confirming the intuition that personal information management behaviour varies greatly. Directions for the generation of test collections and other future research are discussed.
Data Recovery Techniques for Computer Forensics is a practical and comprehensive reference designed for professionals, students, and researchers in digital forensics, data recovery, and information security. This handbook provides clear, structured guidance on essential principles and practical techniques for recovering lost or compromised digital data in forensic investigations.
The book begins with the fundamentals of data recovery and examines the major causes of data loss, including software errors and hardware failures. It then explores contemporary data protection technologies and delves into the structure and organization of hard disks, laying a solid foundation for understanding data storage systems.
Specialized chapters cover the recovery and management of various file systems, including FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS, along with methods for partition recovery and an introduction to dynamic disk management. The final section introduces essential data security software used to protect and recover digital information.
Key Features
Covers basic and applied data recovery concepts for forensic applications
Explains causes of data loss and modern data protection technologies
Detailed chapters on hard disk structure, data organization, and partition recovery
Practical guidance on managing and recovering FAT16, FAT32, and NTFS file systems
Introduces dynamic disk configurations and essential data security tools
Purpose-In the era of digital intelligence, individuals are increasingly interacting with digital information in their daily lives and work, and a growing phenomenon known as digital hoarding is becoming more prevalent. Prior research suggests that humanities researchers have unique and longstanding information interaction and management practices in the digital scholarship context. This study therefore aims to understand how digital hoarding manifests in humanities researchers' behavior, identify the influencing factors associated with it, and explore how they perceive and respond to digital hoarding behavior.
Design/methodology/approach-Qualitative research methods enable us to acquire a rich insight and nuanced understanding of digital hoarding practices. In this study, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 humanities researchers who were pre-screened for a high propensity for digital hoarding. Thematic analyses were then used to analyze the interview data.
Findings-Three main characteristics of digital hoarding were identified. Further, the research paradigm, digital affordance, and personality traits and habits, collectively influencing the emergence and development of digital hoarding behaviors, were examined. The subtle influence of traditional Chinese culture was encountered. Interestingly, this study found that humanists perceive digital hoarding as a positive expectation (associated with inspiration, aesthetic pursuit, and uncertainty avoidance). Meanwhile, humanists' problematic perception of this behavior is more widely observed-they experience what we conceptualize as an "expectation-perception" gap. Three specific information behaviors related to avoidance were identified as aggravating factors for digital hoarding.
Originality/value-The findings deepen the understanding of digital hoarding behaviors and personal information management among humanities researchers within the LIS field, and implications for humanities researchers, digital scholarship service providers, and digital tool developers are discussed.
Computer users spend time every day interacting with digital files and folders, including downloading, moving, naming, navigating to, searching for, sharing, and deleting them. Such file management has been the focus of many studies across various fields, but has not been explicitly acknowledged nor made the focus of dedicated review. In this article we present the first dedicated review of this topic and its research, synthesizing more than 230 publications from various research domains to establish what is known and what remains to be investigated, particularly by examining the common motivations, methods, and findings evinced by the previously furcate body of work. We find three typical research motivations in the literature reviewed: understanding how and why users store, organize, retrieve, and share files and folders, understanding factors that determine their behavior, and attempting to improve the user experience through novel interfaces and information services. Relevant conceptual frameworks and approaches to designing and testing systems are described, and open research challenges and the significance for other research areas are discussed. We conclude that file management is a ubiquitous, challenging, and relatively unsupported activity that invites and has received attention from several disciplines and has broad importance for topics across information science.
While personal cloud storage services are popular, providers experience difficulty retaining users. Two explanations of user continuance intention, being use continuance theory and trust-commitment theory, emerge from prior literature. However, there is no unifying theoretical lens to reconcile these two explanations. We use a cognitive social capital explanation to unify these two literature streams. We apply our research model to 237 cloud storage users. We find that the cognitive social capital lens significantly predicts both use continuance intention and trust-commitment in personal cloud storage services. Implications for cloud service providers are offered.
Operations security management integrates the activities of all the information systems security controls. It ensures that the entire computing environment is adequately secured. This chapter conducts an in-depth review of scholarly and practitioner works to conceptualize the domain of operations security management. Drawing upon the existing information systems security literature, the chapter classifies operations security management into ten domains. Following, the chapter performs an empirical analysis to investigate the state-of-practice of operations security management in organizations. The findings show that the maturity level of operations security management is at the Level 3 (Well-Defined). The maturity levels range from Level 0 (Not Performed) to Level 5 (Continuously Improving). The results indicate that operations security processes are documented, approved, and implemented organization-wide. Backup and malware management are the most applied operations security controls, while logging, auditing, monitoring, and reviewing are the least implemented controls.
Two multi-instrument investigations in a university clinic/lab provided an opportunity to explore the impact of reducing the number of response alternatives in a scale measuring vocational personality traits. In a simulation study, a standard computer-based administration provided a numeric scale for each item ranging from 0 to 10. The tests were then rescored to simulate the effect of only three choices. For the follow-up study, two versions of the scale were created, one with two response options and the other with six response options, and were randomly assigned to participants. Typical relationships were evident between the vocational personality traits and scores on standard measures of core personality traits with negligible impact from reducing the number of response alternatives. Neither the ability of the participants nor the self-reported distress had a measurable impact on the utility of the results with the reduction in response alternatives.
This article builds on job characteristics and optimal flow theory to describe the experience of individuals using computers in the workplace. A model was developed and tested with linear structural relationship modeling (LISREL) with data from 149 professionals employed in a variety of organizations. Flow, which is characterized by intense concentration and enjoyment, was found to be significantly linked with exploratory use behavior, which in turn was linked to extent of computer use. Flow was itself determined by the individual's sense of being in control and the level of challenge perceived in using computers. Perceived control was more important for individuals with high task-scope jobs, that is, jobs with high variety, identity, autonomy, and feedback. Challenge played a greater role for low task-scope individuals. Practical and theoretical implications of the model are discussed, and suggestions for further research are offered.
Publisher Summary This chapter addresses the universals in the content and structure of values, concentrating on the theoretical advances and empirical tests in 20 countries, and its four basic issues: substantive contents of human values; identification of comprehensive set of values; extent to which the meaning of particular values was equivalent for different groups of people; and how the relations among different values was structured. Substantial progress has been made toward resolving each of these issues. Ten motivationally distinct value types that were likely to be recognized within and across cultures and used to form value priorities were identified. Set of value types that was relatively comprehensive, encompassing virtually all the types of values to which individuals attribute at least moderate importance as criteria of evaluation was demonstrated. The evidence from 20 countries was assembled, showing that the meaning of the value types and most of the single values that constitute them was reasonably equivalent across most groups. Two basic dimensions that organize value systems into an integrated motivational structure with consistent value conflicts and compatibilities were discovered. By identifying universal aspects of value content and structure, the chapter has laid the foundations for investigating culture-specific aspects in the future.
This paper reports a study of Personal Information Management (PIM), which advances research in two ways: (1) rather than focusing on one tool, we collected cross-tool data relating to file, email and web bookmark usage for each participant, and (2) we collected longitudinal data for a subset of the participants. We found that individuals employ a rich variety of strategies both within and across PIM tools, and we present new strategy classifications that reflect this behaviour. We discuss synergies and differences between tools that may be useful in guiding the design of tool integration. Our longitudinal data provides insight into how PIM behaviour evolves over time, and suggests how the supporting nature of PIM discourages reflection by users on their strategies. We discuss how the promotion of some reflection by tools and organizations may benefit users.
The personal archive is not only about efficient storage and retrieval of information. This paper describes a study of forty-eight academics and the techniques and tools they use to manage their digital and material archiving of papers, emails, documents, internet bookmarks, correspondence, and other artifacts. We present two sets of results: we first discuss rationales behind subjects' archiving, which go beyond information retrieval to include creating a legacy, sharing resources, confronting fears and anxieties, and identity construction. We then show how these rationales were mapped into our subjects' physical, social and electronic spaces, and discuss implications for development of digital tools that allow for personal archiving.
Email has become more like a habitat than an application. It is used for a wide range of tasks such as information management and for coordination and collaboration in organizations. Our research shows that email is the place in which a great deal of work is received and delegated and is a growing portal for access to online publications and information services. It has become the place where PC users spend much if not most of their workdays (the application is always on, and is often the focus of attention). This, and the burgeoning quantities of messages and attachments that email delivers to people each day, has led users to co-opt it as a personal information management (PIM) tool. In fact this simply follows from what we have found to be a common tendency of knowledge workers, which is to embed personal information management directly into their favorite workspaces.
Valid measurement scales for predicting user acceptance of computers are in short supply. Most subjective measures used in practice are unvalidated, and their relationship to system usage is unknown. The present research develops and validates new scales for two specific variables, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, which are hypothesized to be fundamental determinants of user acceptance. Definitions for these two variables were used to develop scale items that were pretested for content validity and then tested for reliability and construct validity in two studies involving a total of 152 users and four application programs. The measures were refined and streamlined, resulting in two six-item scales with reliabilities of .98 for usefulness and .94 for ease of use. The scales exhibited high convergent, discriminant, and factorial validity. Perceived usefulness was significantly correlated with both self-reported current usage (r=.63, Study 1) and self-predicted future usage (r =.85, Study 2). Perceived ease of use was also significantly correlated with current usage (r=.45, Study 1) and future usage (r=.59, Study 2). In both studies, usefulness had a significantly greater correlation with usage behavior than did ease of use. Regression analyses suggest that perceived ease of use may actually be a causal antecedent to perceived usefulness, as opposed to a parallel, direct determinant of system usage. Implications are drawn for future research on user acceptance.
We conducted a preliminary field study to understand the current state of personal digital archiving in practice. Our aim is to design a service for the long-term storage, preservation, and access of digital belongings by examining how personal archiving needs intersect with existing and emerging archiving technologies, best practices, and policies. Our findings not only confirmed that experienced home computer users are creating, receiving, and finding an increasing number of digital belongings, but also that they have already lost irreplaceable digital artifacts such as photos, creative efforts, and records. Although participants reported strategies such as backup and file replication for digital safekeeping, they were seldom able to implement them consistently. Four central archiving themes emerged from the data: (1) people find it difficult to evaluate the worth of accumulated materials; (2) personal storage is highly distributed both on- and offline; (3) people are experiencing magnified curatorial problems associated with managing files in the aggregate, creating appropriate metadata, and migrating materials to maintainable formats; and (4) facilities for long-term access are not supported by the current desktop metaphor. Four environmental factors further complicate archiving in consumer settings: the pervasive influence of malware; consumer reliance on ad hoc IT providers; an accretion of minor system and registry inconsistencies; and strong consumer beliefs about the incorruptibility of digital forms, the reliability of digital technologies, and the social vulnerability of networked storage.
Introduction. This paper reports on the observation of twenty participants engaged on personal projects. The goal was to understand how people organize and structure a personal information collection.
Method. Selected participants were asked to choose a relatively new project that they would likely be working on and completing in six to eight weeks. Participants were interviewed three times over the study period and the interviews were transcribed.
Analysis. Members of the research team independently read each interview transcript, then met to discuss their independent analyses of the data. Through several iterations of this process, the researchers developed the themes and working definitions for their coding of the transcripts.
Results. Participants changed the organization of their collections by adding new folders or categories, increasing the number of separate piles for information, or adding tags. They collected more information for their project than anticipated and found their initial plans for managing this information inadequate. Some abandoned their collections, while others faced the inadequacy of their strategies with resignation.
Conclusion. Participants often described the need for a system which allowed for greater integration of their information. They assigned human qualities - an intelligent automated helper that would magically solve the challenges they face with the management of a personal information collection.
WE ARE ADRIFT IN A SEA OF INFORMATION. We need information to make good decisions, to get things done, to learn, and to gain better mastery of the world around us. But we do not always have good control of our informationnot even in the "home waters" of an office or on the hard drive of a computer. Instead, information may be controlling uskeeping us from doing the things we need to do, getting us to waste money and precious time. The growth of available information, plus the technologies for its creation, storage, retrieval, distribution and use, is astonishing and sometimes bewildering. Can there be a similar growth in our understanding for how best to manage information and informational tools? This book provides a comprehensive overview of personal information management (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. Introductory chapters of Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management provide an overview of PIM and a sense for its many facets. The next chapters look more closely at the essential challenges of PIM, including finding, keeping, organizing, maintaining, managing privacy, and managing information flow. The book also contains chapters on search, email, mobile PIM, web-based support, and other technologies relevant to PIM. * Focuses exclusively on one of the most interesting and challenging problems in todays 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.
Download Free Sample With its theme, "Our Information, Always and Forever," Part I of this book covers the basics of personal information management (PIM) including six essential activities of PIM and six (different) ways in which information can be personal to us. Part I then goes on to explore key issues that arise in the "great migration" of our information onto the Web and into a myriad of mobile devices. Part II provides a more focused look at technologies for managing information that promise to profoundly alter our practices of PIM and, through these practices, the way we lead our lives. Part II is in five chapters: - Chapter 5. Technologies of Input and Output. Technologies in support of gesture, touch, voice, and even eye movements combine to support a more natural user interface (NUI). Technologies of output include glasses and "watch" watches. Output will also increasingly be animated with options to "zoom". - Chapter 6. Technologies to Save Our Information. We can opt for "life logs" ...
Provides information on creating an effective Web site based on the stages of seduction and looks at the motivations of the site's users.
How will we manage our heterogeneous collections of digital information over a lifetime? How will we look through many decades worth of digital belongings? What will our digital legacy be? We can think of long-term PIM issues from three equally important perspectives: (1) storing the digital belongings we have amassed over the years (long-term storage); (2) maintaining these belongings in a form that allows them to be viewed, used, or possibly even changed (preservation); and (3) providing individual and collaborative mechanisms for reclaiming these belongings from long-term digital storage (access).
This paper summarizes and synthesizes two independent studies of the ways users organize and find files on their computers. The first study (Barreau 1995) investigated information organization practices among users of DOS, Windows and OS/2. The second study (Nardi, Anderson and Erickson 1995), examined the finding and filing practices of Macintosh users. There were more similarities in the two studies than differences. Users in both studies (1) preferred location-based finding because of its crucial reminding function; (2) avoided elaborate filing schemes; (3) archived relatively little information; and (4) worked with three types of information: ephemeral, working and archived. A main difference between the study populations was that the Macintosh users used subdirectories to organize information and the DOS users did not.
Previous research indicates that perceived usefulness is a major determinant and predictor of intentions to use computers in the workplace. In contrast, the impact of enjoyment on usage intentions has not been examined. Two studies are reported concerning the relative effects of usefulness and enjoyment on intentions to use, and usage of, computers in the workplace. Usefulness had a strong effect on usage intentions in both Study 1, regarding word processing software (β=.68), and Study 2, regarding business graphics programs (β=.79). As hypothesized, enjoyment also had a significant effect on intentions in both studies, controlling for perceived usefulness (β=.16 and 0.15 for Studies 1 and 2, respectively). Study 1 found that intentions correlated 0.63 with system usage and that usefulness and enjoyment influenced usage behavior entirely indirectly through their effects on intentions. In both studies, a positive interaction between usefulness and enjoyment was observed. Together, usefulness and enjoyment explained 62% (Study 1) and 75% (Study 2) of the variance in usage intentions. Moreover, usefulness and enjoyment were found to mediate fully the effects on usage intentions of perceived output quality and perceived ease of use. As hypothesized, a measure of task importance moderated the effects of ease of use and output quality on usefulness but not on enjoyment. Several implications are drawn for how to design computer programs to be both more useful and more enjoyable in order to increase their acceptability among potential users.
An early paper that explored personal information management (PIM) described two general needs for personal information management behaviors at work [1]. The first, finding, as it relates to search, has been explored in some depth. The second, reminding, has hardly been explored at all although it was clearly important to the subjects studied. Reminding, in digital environments, isn't about searching -it is about triggering memory, managing tasks, and learning from experience. This paper briefly explores the notion of reminding and describes ongoing research under the M 2 project that will examine the role of reminding as it relates to how college students utilize personal documents in a learning environment.
Cloud computing is a way to increase the capacity or add capabilities dynamically without investing in new infrastructure, training new personnel, or licensing new software. It extends Information Technology’s (IT) existing capabilities. In the last few years, cloud computing has grown from being a promising business concept to one of the fast growing segments of the IT industry. But as more and more information on individuals and companies are placed in the cloud, concerns are beginning to grow about just how safe an environment it is. Despite of all the hype surrounding the cloud, enterprise customers are still reluctant to deploy their business in the cloud. Security is one of the major issues which reduces the growth of cloud computing and complications with data privacy and data protection continue to plague the market. The advent of an advanced model should not negotiate with the required functionalities and capabilities present in the current model. A new model targeting at improving features of an existing model must not risk or threaten other important features of the current model. The architecture of cloud poses such a threat to the security of the existing technologies when deployed in a cloud environment. Cloud service users need to be vigilant in understanding the risks of data breaches in this new environment. In this paper, a survey of the different security risks that pose a threat to the cloud is presented. This paper is a survey more specific to the different security issues that has emanated due to the nature of the service delivery models of a cloud computing system.
Many people manage a complex assortment of digital information in their lives. Volunteer coordinators at nonprofit organizations are no exception; they collectively manage information about millions of volunteers every year. Yet current information management systems are insufficient for their needs. In this paper, we present results of a qualitative study of the information management practices of volunteer coordinators. We identify the resource constraints and the diverse and fluid information needs, stakeholders, and work contexts that motivate their information management strategies. We characterize the assemblages of information systems that volunteer coordinators have created to satisfice their needs as 'homebrew databases.' Finally, we identify additional information management challenges that result from the use of these 'homebrew databases,' highlighting deficiencies in the appropriateness and usability of databases and information management systems, more generally.
Computers today make it easy for people to scatter copies and versions of digital items across their file systems, but do little to help people manage the resulting mess. In this paper, we introduce the concept of a copy-aware computing ecosystem, inspired by a vision of computing when systems track and surface copy relationships between files. Based on two deployments of a copy-aware software prototype and in-depth interviews with individuals in collaborative relationships, we present our findings on the origins of copies and the barriers to eliminating them, but offer a promising solution based on the set of files that together represent a user's conceptual view of a document - the versionset. We show that the versionset is viable to infer, and we draw upon user activity logs and feedback on personalized views of versionsets to distill guidelines for the factors that define a versionset. We conclude by enumerating the many PIM user experiences that could be transformed as a result.
This paper describes a series of interviews that examine the ways that professional office workers use electronic mail to manage their daily work. The purpose is to generate hypotheses for future research. A number of implications for the design of flexible mail systems are discussed.
Two principal claims are made. First, the use of electronic mail is strikingly diverse, although not infinitely so. Individuals vary both in objective measures of mail use and in preferred strategies for managing work electronically. Feelings of control are similarly diverse and are related to the size of the user's inbox, numbers of folders, and subscriptions to distribution lists. This diversity implies that one's own experiences with electronic mail are unlikely to provide sufficient understanding of other's uses of mail. Mail designers should thus seek flexible primitives that capture the important dimensions of use and provide flexibility for a wide range of users.
The second claim is that electronic mail is more than just a communication system. Users archive messages for subject retrieval, prioritize messages to sequence work activities, and delegate tasks via mail. A taxonomy of work management is proposed in which mail is used for information management, time management, and task management activities. Directions for future research are suggested.
Three meanings of “information” are distinguished: “Information-as-process”; “information-as-knowledge”; and “information-as-thing,” the attributive use of “information” to denote things regarded as informative. The nature and characteristics of “information-as-thing” are discussed, using an indirect approach (“What things are informative?”). Varieties of “information-as-thing” include data, text, documents, objects, and events. On this view “information” includes but extends beyond communication. Whatever information storage and retrieval systems store and retrieve is necessarily “information-as-thing.”These three meanings of “information,” along with “information processing,” offer a basis for classifying disparate information-related activities (e.g., rhetoric, bibliographic retrieval, statistical analysis) and, thereby, suggest a topography for “information science.” © 1991 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
Personal information management (PIM) systems are information systems developed by individuals for use in a work environment. Seven managers were interviewed to observe how their electronic documents were organized, stored, and retrieved. The purpose of the study was to investigate classification behavior both to identify the features of a PIM system and to suggest whether the factors which influence classification decisions in an electronic environment were consistent with the factors that Kwasnik observed for physical documents in an office. It is suggested that these behaviors may be influenced by the hardware and software environment and may impact personal as well as organizational efficiency. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
This study deals with the problems users encounter in their daily work with computers and the typical practices that they employ. Sixteen daily computer users were interviewed about their habits and problems that they encountered during document classification and retrieval. For both these areas, we provide an overview of identified user practices and a citation-based analysis of the problems users encountered, including those related to the use of the screen real estate (the actual desktop). Two types of problems were identified: (1) Problems that concern the actual use of the system installed on the computer. (2) Problems that arise when people realise that they are using a system that does not allow for the desired work or organizational functions sought. We were able to show that skill continues to be an important factor with respect to the ease of using today's systems. We suggest the following necessary improvements for the evolution of personal information systems: A storage facility that represents the user's view of information; replacing pure technical file metadata with more user-friendly attributes; and introduction of annotations as a new information type.
This article argues for the following: 1. Information is a thing to be handled and controlled; knowledge is not. 2. Knowledge can be managed only indirectly, through the management of information. 3. Personal knowledge management (PKM) is, therefore, best regarded as a subset of personal information management (PIM) - but a very useful subset addressing important issues that otherwise might be overlooked.
The article discusses data preservation, exploring the issues and trends associated with preserving digital data. The author also examines the manner in which such data can be kept manageable, available, accessible, and secure. Examples of vital information stored digitally include medical records, financial data, and photos. Other topics include cyberinfrastructure (CI) defined as the distributed computer, information, and communication technology in a system and the fact that there is more data being created than there is storage to host it.
Personal document management is the activity of managing a collection of digital documents performed by the owner of the documents, and consists of creation/acquisition, organisation, finding and maintenance. Document management is a pervasive aspect of digital work, but has received relatively little attention from researchers. The hierarchical file system used by most people to manage their documents has not conceptually changed in decades. Although revolutionary prototypes have been developed, these have not been grounded in a thorough understanding of document management behaviour and therefore have not resulted in significant changes to document management interfaces. Improvements in understanding document management can result in productivity gains for knowledge workers, and since document management is such a common activity, small improvements can deliver large gains. The aim of this research was to understand how people manage their personal document collections and to develop guidelines for the development of tools to support personal document management. A field study was conducted that included interviews, a survey and file system snapshot. The interviews were conducted with ten participants to investigate their document management strategies, structures and struggles. In addition to qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews, a novel investigation technique was developed in the form of a file system snapshot which collects information about document structures and derives a number of metrics which describe the document structure. A survey was also conducted, consisting of a questionnaire and a file system snapshot, which enabled the findings of the field study to be validated, and to collect information from a greater number of participants. The results of this research culminated in (1) development of a conceptual framework highlighting the key personal document management attitudes, behaviours and concerns; (2) model of basic operations that any document management system needs to provide; (3) identification of piling, filing and structuring as three key document management strategies; (4) guidelines for the development of user interfaces to support document management, including specific guidelines for each document management strategy. These contributions both improve knowledge of personal document management on which future research can build, and provide practical advice to document management system designers which should result in the development of more usable system.
In this article I explore the implications of the four challenges presented in Part 1 – (1) accumulation, (2) distribution, (3) digital stewardship, and (4) long-term access – and discuss some promising technological directions and requirements for each. To address issues associated with accumulation, I examine the question of what we should keep and how we should designate and assess value of digital objects. Distribution raises the question of where we should put our digital belongings; here I propose the creation of a catalog of distributed stores. Digital stewardship raises the fundamental question of maintenance outside of the institution; in this case, I discuss a range of curation services and mechanisms. Finally, there is the question of how we will find these items we have stored long ago; I look at some new access modes that have begun to appear. I then wrap up the discussion by reflecting on what it means to lose some of our digital assets and how we might think of digital archiving technologies fr
Most of us engage in magical thinking when it comes to the long term fate of our digital belongings. This magical thinking may manifest itself in several ways: technological optimism ("JPEG is so common; why would it stop working?"), radical ephemeralism ("It's like a fire: you just have to move on"), or simply a gap between principals and practice ("I don't know why I never made a copy of those photos."). At this point, a strategy that hinges on benign neglect and lots of copies seems to be the best we can hope for. For the last few years, with various collaborators, I have tried to understand the current state of personal digital archiving in practice with the aim of designing services for the long-term storage, preservation, and access of digital belongings. Our studies have not only confirmed that experienced computer users have accumulated a substantial amount of digital stuff that they care about, but also that they have already lost irreplaceable artifacts such as photos, creative efforts, research
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