INSC 598
Personal Information Management
Information School
University of Washington
Course Description •
Importance of PIM
Course Evaluation •
Academic Conduct
Spring 2008
Instructor: William Jones
E-mail:
Voice:
Fax:
Class meets in: SWS B012
Tuesdays 2 - 4:50PM
Office Hours: Tuesdays, 5pm – 6pm. Other times by appointment.
Office Location: 4311 11th Avenue NE, Suite 400
Course Description
This course provides an overview of Personal Information Management or PIM both as a field of inquiry and as an activity that all of us of necessity perform every day. The course includes the following:
- A historical overview of PIM with special emphasis on developments over the past 20 years.
- An analytical breakdown of PIM with respect to key challenges and activities of information management including finding/re-finding, keeping, organizing, maintaining, managing privacy and the flow of information).
- An assessment of current PIM research and development – including promising lines of empirical inquiry, theoretical development and tool development.
- A practical assessment of our individual practices of PIM. What can we do now with existing tools?
- A overview of the many tools that promise to help with PIM.
The course will provide a “yardstick” that can be used to evaluate these tools. Which will work for us now and over the longer term? Which are worth the trouble?
The course is highly interactive. Students will have the opportunity to assess and refine their own individual strategies of PIM. Students will also have the opportunity to participate in a team project to build a better “system” of PIM (coding or the development of computer-based prototype is optional).
Importance of PIM
Why this course?
Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities we each perform constantly throughout the day to manage our information in all its various forms (e.g., as email, files, web pages and paper), and with all our various tools and gadgets, to get things done. Information is often the great waster of our energy, attention and, most of all, our time. But information also provides the means to better manage these precious resources.
PIM provides an integrative meeting ground for the disciplines of cognitive science, human-computer interaction, database management, artificial intelligence, information and knowledge management, information retrieval and information science. What are we struggling to do with our information? How can systems – computer-based and not – help us?
The payoffs for advances in PIM are large and varied:
- Better PIM means better management of our information to fulfill our many roles in life and to meet our many goals – near-term and long-term.
- Within organizations, better PIM means better employee productivity and better team work in the near-term. In the long-run, PIM is also key to the management and leverage of employee expertise.
- Better PIM is also about teachable strategies and techniques that can be included in educational programs of information literacy.
- Better PIM puts the “personal” in information management by recognizing the tremendous diversity among individuals as influenced by cultural, ethnic and educational background, age, gender, group interaction, home and workplace environments and the special circumstances of disability or disease.
Course Evaluation
The end-of-quarter course evaluations will be handed out to you in class. You will have opportunity to evaluate the course and your work in the course.
Academic Conduct
The following paragraphs discussing academic integrity, copyright and privacy outline matters governing student conduct in the iSchool and the University of Washington. They apply to all assignments and communications in this course.
Academic Integrity
The essence of academic life revolves around respect not only for the ideas of others, but also their rights to those ideas and their promulgation. It is therefore essential that all of us engaged in the life of the mind take the utmost care that the ideas and expressions of ideas of other people always be appropriately handled, and, where necessary, cited. For writing assignments, when ideas or materials of others are used, they must be cited. The format is not that important–as long as the source material can be located and the citation verified, it’s OK. What is important is that the material be cited. In any situation, if you have a question, please feel free to ask. Such attention to ideas and acknowledgment of their sources is central not only to academic life, but life in general.
Please acquaint yourself with the University of Washington's resources on academic honesty.
Copyright
All of the expressions of ideas in this class that are fixed in any tangible medium such as digital and physical documents are protected by copyright law as embodied in title 17 of the United States Code. These expressions include the work product of both: (1) your student colleagues (e.g., any assignments published here in the course environment or statements committed to text in a discussion forum); and, (2) your instructors (e.g., the syllabus, assignments, reading lists, and lectures). Within the constraints of "fair use" (you should have/will have learned about that in depth in LIS 550), you may copy these copyrighted expressions for your personal intellectual use in support of your education here in the iSchool. Such fair use by you does not include further distribution by any means of copying, performance or presentation beyond the circle of your close acquaintances, student colleagues in this class and your family. If you have any questions regarding whether a use to which you wish to put one of these expressions violates the creator's copyright interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.
Grading
See the Grading section on the Requirements and Grading page.
Privacy
To support an academic environment of rigorous discussion and open expression of personal thoughts and feelings, we, as members of the academic community, must be committed to the inviolate right of privacy of our student and instructor colleagues. As a result, we must forego sharing personally identifiable information about any member of our community including information about the ideas they express, their families, life styles and their political and social affiliations. If you have any questions regarding whether a disclosure you wish to make regarding anyone in this course or in the iSchool community violates that person's privacy interests, please feel free to ask the instructor for guidance.
Knowing violations of these principles of academic conduct, privacy or copyright may result in University disciplinary action under the Student Code of Conduct.
Students with Disabilities
To request academic accommodations due to a disability, please contact Disabled Student Services: 448 Schmitz, 206-543-8924 (V/TTY). If you have a letter from DSS indicating that you have a disability which requires academic accommodations, please present the letter to me so we can discuss the accommodations you might need in the class.
Academic accommodations due to disability will not be made unless the student has a letter from DSS specifying the type and nature of accommodations needed.
Student Code of Conduct
Good student conduct is important for maintaining a healthy course environment. Please familiarize yourself with the University of Washington's Student Code of Conduct.
Overview •
Schedule •
Readings •
Requirements & Grading
Last updated: Thursday, 20-Mar-2008 11:52:38 PDT
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