Course Overview

• Prerequisites: doctoral student in Information Science, Biomedical and Health Informatics, or permission of instructor.
• Content: 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: (1) A historical overview of PIM with special emphasis on developments over the past 20 years. (2) An analytical breakdown of PIM with respect to key problems, activities of information management (assessment of need, finding, keeping, organization & maintenance, re-finding…) and domains of information management (email, web, e-documents, paper…). (3) An assessment of current PIM research and development – including promising lines of empirical inquiry, theoretical development and tool development. (4) A practical review of enduring “dos” and “don’ts” of personal information management. (5) An overview of the many tools that promise to help with PIM. The course will provide a way of evaluating these tools with respect to key activities of PIM. Special attention is given to new tool developments of the past year or so.
• Style: The course is highly interactive. Students will have the opportunity to assess and refine their own individual strategies of PIM. Students can begin work on their own Personal Unifying Taxonomies in support of these strategies. The course will also explore some of the differing tool requirements of different strategies.
• Readings will be available online through e-reserves (available soon)

Topics

• The history of PIM with special emphasis on developments over the past 20 years.
• An analytical breakdown of PIM with respect to key problems, activities of information management (assessment of need, finding, keeping, organization & maintenance, re-finding…) and domains of information management (email, web, e-documents, paper…).
• An assessment of current PIM research and development – including promising lines of empirical inquiry, theoretical development and tool development.
• A practical review of enduring “dos” and “don’ts” of personal information management.
• An overview of the many tools that promise to help with PIM. The course will provide a way of evaluating these tools with respect to key activities of PIM. Special attention is given to new tool developments of the past year or so.