Sense-making Across Space and Time: Implications for the Organization and Findability of Information

摘要

This paper presents the results from a study ofinformation behaviors, with specific focus on informationorganisation-related behaviours conducted as part of alarger daily diary study with 34 participants. The findingsindicate that organization of information in everyday lifeis a problematic area due to various factors. The selfevidentone is the inter-subjectivity between the personwho may have organized the information and the personlooking for that same information (Berlin et. al., 1993).Increasingly though, we are not just looking forinformation within collections that have been designed bysomeone else, but within our own personal collections ofinformation, which frequently include books, electronicfiles, photos, records, documents, desktops, webbookmarks, and portable devices. The passage of timebetween when we categorized or classified theinformation, and the time when we look for the sameinformation, poses several problems of intra-subjectivity,or the difference between our own past and presentperceptions of the same information. Informationsearching, and hence the retrieval of information fromone's own collection of information in everyday lifeinvolved a spatial and temporal coordination with one'sown past selves in a sort of cognitive and affective timetravel, just as organizing information is a form ofanticipatory coordination with one's future informationneeds. This has implications for finding information andalso on personal information management.