Personal Information Management

In an ideal world, everyone would always have the right information, in the right form, with the right context, right when they needed it. Unfortunately, we do not live in an ideal world. This book looks at how people in the real world currently manage to store and process the massive amounts of information that overload their senses and their systems, and discusses how tools can help bring these real information interactions closer to the ideal. Personal information management (PIM) is the study and practice of the activities people perform to acquire, organize, maintain, and retrieve information for everyday use. PIM is a growing area of interest as we all strive for better use of our limited personal resources of time, money, and energy, as well as greater workplace efficiency and productivity. Personal information is currently fragmented across electronic documents, email messages, paper documents, digital photographs, music, videos, instant messages, and so on. Each form of information is organized and used to complete different tasks and to fulfill disparate roles and responsibilities in an individual’s life. Existing PIM tools are partly responsible for this fragmentation. They can also be part of the solution that brings information together again. A major contribution of this book is its integrative treatment of PIM-related research. The book grows out of a workshop on PIM sponsored by the National Science Foundation, held in Seattle, Washington, in 2006. Scholars from major universities and researchers from companies such as Microsoft Research, Google, and IBM offer approaches to conceptual problems of information management. In doing so, they provide a framework for thinking about PIM as an area for future research and innovation.

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

Product Information Management is the latest topic that companies across the world are deliberating upon. As companies sell online, they are confronted with the fact that not all information necessary to sell their products is available. Where marketing, sales and finance have been core processes of the corporate world for a long time, PIM is a new business process with its own unique implementation and management challenges. The book describes the core PIM processes; their strategic, tactical and operational benefits and implementation challenges. The book has been written for managers, business users as well as students, and illustrates the different concepts with practical cases from companies like Coca Cola, Nikon and Thomas Cook.

Why we organize our personal digital data the way we do and how design of new PIM systems can help us manage our information more efficiently. Each of us has an ever-growing collection of personal digital data: documents, photographs, PowerPoint presentations, videos, music, emails and texts sent and received. To access any of this, we have to find it. The ease (or difficulty) of finding something depends on how we organize our digital stuff. In this book, personal information management (PIM) experts Ofer Bergman and Steve Whittaker explain why we organize our personal digital data the way we do and how the design of new PIM systems can help us manage our collections more efficiently. Bergman and Whittaker report that many of us use hierarchical folders for our personal digital organizing. Critics of this method point out that information is hidden from sight in folders that are often within other folders so that we have to remember the exact location of information to access it. Because of this, information scientists suggest other methods: search, more flexible than navigating folders; tags, which allow multiple categorizations; and group information management. Yet Bergman and Whittaker have found in their pioneering PIM research that these other methods that work best for public information management don't work as well for personal information management. Bergman and Whittaker describe personal information collection as curation: we preserve and organize this data to ensure our future access to it. Unlike other information management fields, in PIM the same user organizes and retrieves the information. After explaining the cognitive and psychological reasons that so many prefer folders, Bergman and Whittaker propose the user-subjective approach to PIM, which does not replace folder hierarchies but exploits these unique characteristics of PIM.

This HIM lifecycle resource will be useful to a wide range of jurisdictions that manage health information. The document will provide a summary of the recommended leading practices and principles related to managing health information throughout its lifecycle, regardless of the type of jurisdiction or information media. -- Publisher's website.

Individuals need to survive and grow in changing and sometimes turbulent organizational environments, while organizations and societies want individuals to have the knowledge, skills and abilities that will enable them to prosper and thrive. Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) is a means of coping with complex environmental changes and developments: it is a form of sophisticated career and life management. Personal Knowledge Management is an evolving concept that focuses on the importance of individual growth and learning as much as on the technology and management processes traditionally associated with organizational knowledge management. This book looks at the emergence of PKM from a multi-disciplinary perspective, and its contributors reflect the diverse fields of study that touch upon it. Relatively little research or major conceptual development has so far been focused on PKM, but already significant questions are being asked, such as 'is there an inherent conflict between personal and organizational knowledge management and how best do we harmonize individual and organizational goals?' This book will inform, stimulate and challenge every reader. By delving both deeply and broadly into its subject, the distinguished authors help all those concerned with 'knowledge work' and 'knowledge workers' to see how PKM supports and affects individuals, organizations and society as a whole; to better understand the concepts involved and to benefit from relevant research in this important area.

Use Best Practice Patterns to Understand and Architect Manageable, Efficient Information Supply Chains That Help You Leverage All Your Data and Knowledge In the era of “Big Data,” information pervades every aspect of the organization. Therefore, architecting and managing it is a multi-disciplinary task. Now, two pioneering IBM® architects present proven architecture patterns that fully reflect this reality. Using their pattern language, you can accurately characterize the information issues associated with your own systems, and design solutions that succeed over both the short- and long-term. Building on the analogy of a supply chain, Mandy Chessell and Harald C. Smith explain how information can be transformed, enriched, reconciled, redistributed, and utilized in even the most complex environments. Through a realistic, end-to-end case study, they help you blend overlapping information management, SOA, and BPM technologies that are often viewed as competitive. Using this book’s patterns, you can integrate all levels of your architecture–from holistic, enterprise, system-level views down to low-level design elements. You can fully address key non-functional requirements such as the amount, quality, and pace of incoming data. Above all, you can create an IT landscape that is coherent, interconnected, efficient, effective, and manageable. Coverage Includes Understanding how a pattern language can help you address key information management challenges Defining information strategy and governance for organizations and users Creating orderly information flows you can reuse and synchronize as needed Managing information structure, meaning, and lifecycles Providing for efficient information access and storage when deploying new IT capabilities Moving information efficiently and reliably to support your processes Determining how information should be processed and maintained Improving quality and accessibility, and supporting higher-value analytics Protecting information via validation, transformation, enrichment, correction, security, and monitoring Planning new information management projects in the context of your existing IT resources