PIM definitions

PIM has been defined by different authors. Although definitions are similar to one another they also supplement each other. The main reason is that some authors have different understanding of what personal information is. Richard Boardman for example defines personal information as information under one person's control. Williams Jones on the other hand understands personal information in a much broader sense.

Before defining Personal Information Management a few other terms have to be defined.

Personal Information

Richard Boardman defines personal information as information owned by an individual and over which this individual has a direct control.

William Jones and James Teevan state that personal information can take various senses.

• the information a person directly or indirectly keeps for personal use,
• information about a person kept under control of others (e.g. medical records),
• information experienced by a person but not in a person’s control (a book from library) and
• information directed to a person (email).

It has to be noted that personal information can exist in various formats and types and it resides in physical or real world and in many digital worlds on our digital devices.

Information Item

Information item is a self contained unit of information which in digital world exists in different technological formats (files, emails, web pages, etc.) and may contain metadata defined by the user or system (size, creation date, name, etc.).

Another definition describes information item as packaging of information in a persistent form that can be acquired, created, moved, grouped with other information items, given name and properties, distributed, deleted or otherwise manipulated. Information items exists in various information forms or types determined by tools or applications that make it possible to manipulate them.

Information items as described above can be for example: a MS Word file, a digital photography, stapled papers, a printed photo book, a cut out article from a newspaper, a book, etc. Any of these information items can be manipulated as a whole.

There is another view on this issue. People reference to sentences, paragraphs, chapters in books. They might be interested in only one recipe in a recipes book for example. Or they are interested in only a small part of a web site or an email. Or they refer to a table in a digital document which has 100 pages. As Scott Fertig, Eric Freeman and David Gelernter argued that desktop metaphor is full of artifacts that shape our information management , maybe documents' formats are artifacts that prevent us to manipulate information chunks. Some might argue that copying/pasting a piece of text does allow us to use information from one item in another but it loses its original context. Some PIM tools (Snip!it, Haystack) have addressed this issue and allowe users to granulate information. The opened question is what is a piece of information to users in relation to an information item as described above.

Personal Information Collection

Personal Information Collections (PIC) are formed by information items.

Boardman describes a collection of personal information as a self-contained set of information items that share the same technological format and can be accessed in a particular application (with the exception of a file system that holds files in different technological formats): email collection, web bookmark collection, a collection of email addresses, etc.

Jones and Teevan do not limit PICs to one technological format, rather PICs are formed based on person’s activities. As such a PIC can take forms of a sub-collection of well organized files or stored bookmarks or even contain files, emails and other information types. PICs are important as they represent smaller chunks (e.g. folders in a hierarchy) out of PSI which can be managed together.

Examples of PICs by Jones and Teevan from the book

• The papers in a well-ordered office and their organization, including the layout of piles ona a desk and folders in a file cabinet
• The papers in a specific file cabinet and their organizing folder (where the whole office is a mess)
• Project related information items dumped in a folder in a file hierarchy and organized over time
• A carefully maintained web bookmarks collection to useful reference sites on the Web
• A Bibtex/EndNote reference database of articles

Task Information Collection

To complete a task information from various sources is needed. Such information could be only residing in one tool and managed together as a PIC. Creation of a PIC is based on a performed task but it also depends on actual application used to manage it. For example information items in one hierarchy can be stored and managed as a PIC together in a folder which provides a simple yet intuitive way of storing semantically connected information of one technological format (or more if we have a folder of files). Simple problems arise when an item belongs to several folders. But more often information needed to complete a task is managed by several tools.

Information related to one task can include sets of files and folders, web pages, contacts, to–do notes, calendar inputs and emails, information from the physical world and new items can enter a collection as well as old items leave it. Such information can reside in several PICs managed in different applications in different ways and can include also individual information items dispersed in (digital and physical) PSI which are not a part of any task based PIC (a set of all emails in Inbox). This information neede to complete a task is called Task Information Collection (TIC).

With present tools managing TICs is left to users as PIM applications do not support managing items dispersed over several folders, hierarchies (applications) and devices. Users create mental links between information items of a TIC. TIC includes also mental links information pieces that are ac quired knowledge in users’ heads. Mental links between items in one TIC and across TICs form a complex interrelated alive environment of information items.

Personal Space of Information

Boardman calls a complete set of collections a Personal Information Environment (PIE).

Jones and Teevan call it a Personal Space of Information (PSI).

PSI or PIE is not limited to a person's digital world. Rather it includes all (four groups of) personal information from the physical and digital worlds on different devices.

Personal Information Management

Here are four definitions by different authors ordered by year of publication. Definitions are similar to one another but are supplementing each other as well.

Mark Lansdale

PIM are the methods and procedures by which we handle, categorize, and retrieve personal information on a day-to-day basis. Personal information is information not in a sense that it is private, but that we have it for our own use. We own it and would feel deprived if it would be taken away. The primary reason (there may be others) for keeping this information is to be able to retrieve and use it in the future.

Richard Boardman

The management of personal information (information owned by an individual, and under their direct control) as performed by the owning individual.

William Jones

Formal definition

Personal information management (PIM) refers to both the practice and the study of the activities a person performs in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, use and distribute the information needed to meet life's many goals (everyday and long-term, work-related and not) and to fulfill life's many roles and responsibilities (as parent, spouse, friend, employee, member of community, etc.). PIM places special emphasis on the organization and maintenance of personal information collections in which information items, such as paper documents, electronic documents, email messages, web references, handwritten notes, etc., are stored for later use and repeated re-use.

Informal definition

PIM is about finding answers to questions such as these: What should I do with all my digital photographs and videos? Will I still be able to see these in thirty or forty years or will they disappear like all the data on my first PC disappeared? Why do I seem to practically live in my email inbox? (if you can call this living). I try to keep up with email but then I don't seem to get anything else done. How should I organize my hard drive? I know what to do with paper documents but my computer files are a mess! Sometimes I think I'd be better off reformatting my hard drive and starting all over again. But PIM is also about finding answers to this question: How can I get smarter about the way I manage my information so that I have more time for my family, friends and the things I really care about in life?

Matjaž Kljun

PIM can be described as management (handling, storing, classifying, organizing, sharing, protecting, archiving) of personal information by a person for various purposes (later retrieving, reminding, collecting, decorating etc.) to support needs and tasks.