标题：Exploring individuals’ patterns of personal information management practices. Factors influencing the representation, organization and credibility assessment of information
出版社：University of Sheffield, Department of Information Studies
摘要：This study investigates the personal information management behaviour of information science graduate students. Gibson's understanding of context as ecology and Suchman's conceptualisation of situated actions were applied to an exploration of the ways in which various tools shape our personal information environments. Naturalistic inquiry was implemented to study the most representative actions associated with the daily personal information interactions of thirty-seve information science graduate students. Diaries and questionnaires were used to elicit details of individuals' approaches to information representation, organization and credibility assessment. Qualitative content analysis was applied to understand the emerged patterns of individuals' information seeking, representation and organization. This study identified the situational and affective nature of graduate students' personal information management strategies, which are often interwoven with system affordances. The participants' expressed reliance on their social groups as well as on the crowd in finding credible sources of information implies the complexity of the sense of trust, whether trust in those with whom they have strong ties, e.g., family and friends, or trust in those whom they perceive as having shared experiences. Investigation of a relatively diverse population of social science graduate students shed light on the complex and nuanced nature of personal information management, wherein various contextual factors influence graduate students' decisions to find, keep and/or re-find the information.
关键词：personal information management; graduate students; information science.
