Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics Used by Senior Engineers

• Main Author: Pikas, Christina K.
• Other Authors: Grove, Andrew
• Language: en
• Published: American Society for Information Science and Technology 2007
• Subjects: Knowledge Management; User Studies; Qualitative Research
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/10150/106236

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.