Personal Information Management Strategies and Tactics used by Senior Engineers

摘要

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.