Composing Information Space: Writers’ Need for Information

Management Techniques

Shaun SlatteryUniversity of South Florida Polytechnic

Computers & Writing @ PurdueFriday, May 22, 2010

You should process information every time you collect it.”

Merlin Mann, 43 Folders, on “Inbox 0”

Personal Information

Management (PIM)

1. rhetorical invention

2. composing processes

3. communication

PIMplications

…more research into the ways writers work to integrate new tools into their writing processes (acting with these technologies rather than simply acting on them or being acted upon by them)”

Derek Van Ittersum. “Distributing Memory: Rhetorical Work in Digital Environments”

TCQ, 18.3, 2009 (p.277)

Abrams, Baecker, & Chignell. (1998.) Information archiving with bookmarks: personal Web space construction and organization, SIGCHI Proceedings, p.41-48.

Abrams, Baecker, & Chignell. (1998.) Information archiving with bookmarks: personal Web space construction and organization, SIGCHI Proceedings, p.41-48.

A problem in evaluating PIM tools or systems is that personal information is, by definition, personal. Thus, it is difficult, or close to impossible, to develop reference tasks that can be performed by multiple users to test multiple tools and approaches”

Manas Tungare. "Mental Workload in Personal Information Management." Unpublished

dissertation. 2009. (p.3)

1. Identify a range of practices from published research, our own research, & informally observed practice

2. “Hack” our PIM practices & develop a repertoire and encourage students to do likewise

3. Model our PIM practices for students

PIM is idiosyncratic

People are slow to adopt new PIM

strategies and resistant to

changing them

Few writers seem willing to wholly adopt and commit to new means of memory work that require drastic changes in their existing practices”

Derek Van Ittersum. “Distributing Memory: Rhetorical Work in Digital

Environments” TCQ, 18.3, 2009 (p.277)

We found that participants were reluctant to engage with a complex range of information sources, preferring to use the Internet. The main driver for progress in information seeking was the immediate demands of their work (e.g., assignments). Students used their growing expertise to justify a conservative information strategy, retaining established strategies as far as possible and completing tasks with minimum information-seeking effort”

Claire Warwick, Jon Rimmer, Ann Blandford, Jeremy Gow, George Buchanan. "Cognitive economy and satisficing in information

seeking: A longitudinal study of undergraduate information behavior." Journal of the American Society for Information

Science and Technology 60.12. 2009. p. 2402

PIM behaviors seem to have changed little over time, suggesting that technological advances are less important in determining how individuals organize and use information than are the tasks that they perform”

Deborah Barreau, The persistence of behavior and form in the organization of personal

information, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, v.59

n.2, p.307-317, January 2008

notes work

…notes help memory in two ways. First, they provide cues that help people retrieve information that they might otherwise forget. Second, the act of taking notes helps people to better focus on incoming information even if they never later consult these notes.”

Vaiva Kalnikaitė & Steve Whittaker. Cueing digital memory: how and why do digital notes

help us remember? Proceedings of the 22nd British HCI Group Annual Conference on HCI

2008. (p. 153)

To Do’s work

contrary to popular wisdom, people are not poor at prioritizing. Rather, they have well-honed strategies for tackling particular task management challenges”

Vaiva Kalnikaitė & Steve Whittaker. Cueing digital memory: how and why do digital

notes help us remember? Proceedings of the 22nd British HCI Group Annual Conference on HCI 2008. (p. 153)

physical/spatial and temporal

cues work

Two physical factors—spatial configuration and document form—were often considered before topic in determining document storage locations in the office”

Case, Donald O. (1991). Conceptual organization and retrieval of text by

historians: the role of memory and metaphor. Journal of the American Society

for Information Science. v42 i9. 657-668.

metadata works

extra terms distinct from the main content [of notes] most frequently added to the beginning or the end… we find many searches that were identical to these appended terms”

Max Van Kleek, Michael Bernstein, Katrina Panovich, Greg Vargas, David Karger, and

M.C. Schraefel. "Note-to-Self: Examining Personal Information Keeping in a

Lightweight Note-Taking Tool." CHI, 2009. (p.3)

PIM is social

PIM is social

researchers in the five universities had similar information-seeking behavior, with small differences because of varying academic unit structures and myriad libary services provided at the individual institutions”

Niu, Xi. National study of information seeking behavior of academic researchers in the

United States. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and

Technology 61.5, 2010. (p.869)

1. Identify a range of practices from published research, our own research, & informally observed practice

2. “Hack” our PIM practices & develop a repertoire and encourage students to do likewise

3. Model our PIM practices for students

our own research…

informally observed practice…

Image: “Taking Notes” a Creative Commons licensed photograph from the Flickr stream of user Phil Gyford.

“Hack” our PIM practices…

Giles Turnbull , O’Reilly author, hacking his PIM

Distributing Memory Rhetorical Work in Digital Environments BIGGEST.pdf

How Do People Organize Their Desks_1983.pdf

Model our PIM practices for students

a collection of flexible, opportunistic practices that lets users construct, out of the tools available to them, useful assemblies of rhetorical tools and practices”

Derek Van Ittersum. “Distributing Memory: Rhetorical Work in Digital Environments”

TCQ, 18.3, 2009 (p.278)

thank you