One of the key activities of personal information management is retaining information for later access and use. Individuals keep information because they think that it will be useful at a future time and they will therefore need to find it again. Individuals keep information in a personal information collection and they base their keeping behaviour on personal, anticipated information need.
In our complex world, the fundamental importance of information in our daily lives is widely acknowledged. People regularly encounter and have access to far more information than they can possibly process. It is common to speak of a glut of information and of information overload. There is a lot of information available and by many measures the amount continues to grow at an exponential pace.
Information plays a significant role in our daily professional and personal lives and we are constantly challenged to take charge of the information that we need for work, fun and everyday decisions and tasks.
In response to this challenge, individuals create a personalized subset of the information world that they can use when they are faced with information needs. This subset of the information world is a personal information collection. The term personal information collection refers broadly to a personal organization of and perspective on information. This includes content in various forms documents, Web pages, mail, notes, calendars, address books, etc.
The concept of a personal information collection is not new to the information field Bovey The numerous models that have been developed over time to describe the behaviour of information seeking and use see Wilson , for examples follow the user with an information need through the processes of seeking information in external sources to the goal of achieving understanding and action. Most of these models also acknowledge the preference of individuals to seek information internally firstβin other words, from a personal store of information sources and channels.
