Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics used by Senior Engineers

Pikas, Christina K. (2007) Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics used by Senior Engineers. In Grove, Andrew, Eds. Proceedings 70th Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIST) 44, Milwaukee, WI (US).

Full text available as:
PDF - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

View statistics for this eprint

Abstract

This paper reports the results of an exploratory qualitative study of how senior engineers in a research laboratory environment do personal information management (PIM). Responsive, semi-structured interviews were conducted with four senior engineers. Thirteen themes in four groupings emerged. The four groupings are: organization and retrieval, un-organized aspects, information keeping and preservation, and use of specialized tools. Themes not seen in other studies are: writing to remember and reporting to retrieve, and personal handbooks. The themes are described in detail. Implications for the design of information systems and future work are discussed.

Keywords:	personal information management, PIM, engineers
Subjects:	C. Users, literacy and reading. > CA. Use studies.
ID Code:	12564
Deposited By:	Pikas, Christina
Deposited On:	24 January 2008
All fields:	Show all fields

Allen, T. J. (1977). Managing the flow of technology: Technology transfer and the dissemination of technological information within the R&D organization. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Anderson, C. J., Glassman, M., McAfee, R. B., & Pinelli, T. (2001). An investigation of factors affecting how engineers and scientists seek information. Journal of Engineering and Technology Management, 18(2), 131-155.

Barreau, D. K. (1995). Context as a factor in personal information management systems. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 46, 327-339.

Bergman, O., Beyth-Marom, R., & Nachmias, R. (2006). The project fragmentation problem in personal information management. Paper presented at the CHI '06: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montreal, Canada. 271-274.

Bovey, J. (1996). Event based personal retrieval. Journal of Information Science, 22(5), 357-366.

Bruce, H. (2005). Personal, anticipated information need. Information Research-an International Electronic Journal, 10(3), paper 232. Retrieved January 9, 2006, from http://informationr.net/ir/10-3/paper232.html.

Bruce, H., Jones, W., & Dumais, S. (2004). Information behaviour that keeps found things found. Information Research-an International Electronic Journal, 10(1), paper 207. Retrieved January 9, 2006, from http://informationr.net/ir/10-1/paper207.html.

Chakrabarti, A. K., Feineman, S., & Fuentevilla, W. (1983). Characteristics of sources, channels, and contents for scientific and technical information systems in industrial R and D. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, EM-30, 83-88.

Cool, C., & Xie, H. (2000). Patterns of information use, avoidance and evaluation in a corporate engineering environment. . Proceedings of the ASIS Annual Meeting, 37, 462-472.

Cutrell, E., Dumais, S. T., & Teevan, J. (2006). Searching to eliminate personal information management. Communications of the ACM, 49(1), 58-64.

Dumais, S., Cutrell, E., Cadiz, J. J., Jancke, G., Sarin, R., & Robbins, D. C. (2003). Stuff I've seen: A system for personal information retrieval and re-use. Paper presented at the SIGIR '03: Proceedings of the 26th Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, Toronto, Canada. 72-79.

Dye, J. F., Schatz, I. M., Rosenberg, B. A., & Coleman, S. T. (2000). Constant comparison method: A kaleidoscope of data. The Qualitative Report, 4 (1/2). Retrieved May 4, 2007, from http://www.nova.edu/ssss/QR/QR3-4/dye.html.

Ellis, D., & Haugan, M. (1997). Modelling the information seeking patterns of engineers and research scientists in an industrial environment. Journal of Documentation, 53, 384-403.

Erdelez, S. (1999). Information encountering: It's more than just bumping into information. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science, 25(3), 25-29.

Fidel, R., & Green, M. (2004). The many faces of accessibility: Engineers' perception of information sources. Information Processing & Management, 40, 563-581.

Hertzum, M., & Pejtersen, A. M. (2000). The information-seeking practices of engineers: Searching for documents as well as for people. Information Processing & Management, 36, 761-778.

Hirsh, S. G., & Kraft, D. H. (2000). Information needs, information seeking, and communication in an industrial R&D environment. Proceedings of the 63rd ASIS Annual Meeting,37. 473-486.

Jones, W. (2007). Personal information management. In B. Cronin (Ed.), Annual review of information science and technology (pp. 453-504). Medford, N.J.: Information Today.

Jones, W., Bruce, H., Foxley, A., & Munat, C. F. (2005). The universal labeler: plan the project and let your information follow. Proceedings of the ASIS&T Annual Meeting, 42.

Kaptelinin, V. (2003). UMEA: Translating interaction histories into project contexts. Paper presented at the CHI '03: Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Ft. Lauderdale, FL, 353-360.

Kaye, J., Vertesi, J., Avery, S., Dafoe, A., David, S., & Onaga, L., et al. (2006). To have and to hold: Exploring the personal archive. Paper presented at the Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, Montréal, Québec. 275-284

Kennedy, J. M., Pinelli, T. E., Barclay, R. O., & Bishop, A. P. (1997). Distinguishing engineers from scientists- the case for an engineering knowledge community. Knowledge diffusion in the U.S. aerospace industry- managing knowledge for competitive advantage (pp. 177-213). Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing Corp.

Kraut, R. E., Egido, C., & Galegher, J. (1990). Patterns of contact and communication in scientific research collaboration. In J. Galegher, R. E. Kraut & C. Egido (Eds.), Intellectual teamwork: Social and technological foundations of cooperative work (pp. 149-171). Hillsdale, NJ: L. Erlbaum Associates.

Kwasitsu, L. (2003). Information-seeking behavior of design, process, and manufacturing engineers. Library & Information Science Research, 25, 459-476.

Kwasnik, B. H. (1991). The importance of factors that are not document attributes in the organization of personal documents. Journal of Documentation, 47, 389-398.

Lansdale, M. W. (1988). The psychology of personal information management. Applied Ergonomics, 19, 55-66.

Leckie, G. J., Pettigrew, K. E., & Sylvain, C. (1996). Modeling the information seeking of professionals: A general model derived from research on engineers, health care professionals, and lawyers. Library Quarterly, 66, 161-193.

Lethbridge, T. C., Singer, J., & Forward, A. (2003). How software engineers use documentation: The state of the practice. IEEE Software, 20, 35-39.

Malone, T. W. (1983). How do people organize their desks - implications for the design of office information-systems. ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 1, 99-112.

Rubin, H. J., & Rubin, I. (2005). Qualitative interviewing: The art of hearing data (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Shankar, K. (in press). Order from chaos: The poetics and pragmatics of scientific recordkeeping. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology.

Shuchman, H. L. (1981). Information transfer in engineering. Glastonbury, CT: The Futures Group.

Taylor, R. S. (1991). Information use environments. In B. Dervin (Ed.), Progress in communication sciences (pp. 217-255). Norwood, NJ: Ablex.

Tenopir, C., & King, D. W. (2004). Communication patterns of engineers. Piscataway, NJ: IEEE Press.

Von Seggern, M., & Jourdain, J. M. (1996). Technical communications in engineering and science the practices within a government defense laboratory. Special Libraries, 87(2), 98-119.

Whittaker, S., & Hirschberg, J. (2001). The character, value, and management of personal paper archives. ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction, 8, 150-170.

Archive Staff Only: edit this record