Introduction to Tales
of PIM
Personal information management (PIM) refers to both the
practice and the study of the activities people perform in
order to acquire, organize, maintain, retrieve and use
information items such as documents (paper-based and
digital), web pages and email messages for everyday use to
complete tasks (work-related and not) and fulfill a
person’s various roles (as parent, employee, friend, member
of community, etc.). One ideal of PIM is that we always
have the right information in the right place, in the right
form, and of sufficient completeness and quality to meet
our current need. Technologies and tools such as personal
information managers help us spend less time with
time-consuming and error-prone activities of PIM (such as
looking for information). We then have more time to make
creative, intelligent use of the information at hand in
order to get things done or, simply, to enjoy the
information itself.
For many people, this ideal seems far away. There are a
bewildering number of tools available for managing personal
information. But these tools can become a part of the
problem leading to information fragmentation. Different
devices and applications often come with their separate
ways of storing and organizing information.
Tales of PIM is an initiative of the Keeping Found Things Found project at
the Information School at the University of Washington
aimed at exploring issues related to PIM tools and
techniques in the form of a conversation. The purpose
of the site is twofold. The first goal is to provide a
forum where people can exchange their experiences with
PIM work and reflect on those experiences. What are
your main PIM-related frustrations? Do you have any
PIM practices that are particularly effective? What
PIM tools do you use and what are your experiences
with them? Have you had any PIM-related breakthroughs?
Based on your experience, what are the main problems
with the way PIM is currently done? Conversations
around such questions should allow all of us to
improve our PIM practice and become more mindful of
how we manage personal information.
The board’s other objective is to act as a repository of
first hand PIM experiences that can be used for research
purposes. We envision the Tales as a resource for
generation and exploration of research ideas, and as a
ready source of vivid accounts illustrative of general PIM
principles. And while we cannot guarantee that the
experiences found on this board are representative of the
PIM experiences in the general population, they can provide
a starting point for more systematic explorations.
Terms and Conditions
In the light of the board’s second objective, it is
important to understand that the data generated on the
Tales of PIM board is open to the academic community and
the public at large. We do not guarantee confidentiality of
any information contributed to the board. Please do not
contribute anything that you do not wish to enter the
public domain, including any research or product ideas that
you are considering pursuing in the future. Similarly,
please do not post any personal experiences that you
consider sensitive and do not wish to become public. While
we expect any potential research drawing on the information
found on this board to be done in an intellectually honest
way and to maintain the integrity of the views expressed
herein, we do not have any control over the type of work
that will result from this material.
Participation on the board requires creation of a user
account. While the registration process asks for the user’s
name and email address, there is no requirement that true
information has to be entered. And while anonymous
participation is possible, the expectation is that the
participation on the board will be constructive and
courteous.
We hope you enjoy reading and contributing your own Tales
of PIM!
Access the Tales of PIM
board.
If you have question or comments about Tales of PIM, please
email to webmaster@talesofpim.org