Personal Email Management on the University Digital Desktop: User Behaviors vs. Archival Best Practices

Winget, Megan A. and Chang, Kimberly and Tibbo, Helen Personal Email Management on the University Digital Desktop: User Behaviors vs. Archival Best Practices., 2006 . In 69th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST), Austin (US), 3-8 November 2006. [Conference paper]

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English abstract

This paper will review findings from an extensive user study which seeks to understand the ways in which individuals currently manage, interact with, and think about electronic files, particularly email. Funded by the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), we web-surveyed nearly 3000 faculty, staff, and administrators; and conducted personal follow-up interviews with 100 people across two universities: one public, one private. Our findings indicate that users and archivists have competing concerns. User concerns revolve around the volume of files with which they are forced to contend, leading to wasted time, improperly deleted files, confusion, and general dissatisfaction with the networked environment. Archivists, on the other hand, concerned with the preservation of digital materials, are focused on organizational issues that are often at odds with users’ daily practice.

Item type: Conference paper
Keywords: electronic files ; file management ; organization ; user behavior ; user attitude
Subjects: B. Information use and sociology of information
Depositing user: Norm Medeiros
Date deposited: 08 Jan 2007
Last modified: 02 Oct 2014 12:06
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/10760/8780

References

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