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.[1]
William Jones and James Teevan state that personal information can take various senses.[2]
- 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.)[1].
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 [2].