Personal Information Management

Personal Information Management (PIM) is a combination of strategies and tools that help to manage, organize, access, share, and use information. An understanding of these twin pillars is beneficial to a students ability to effectively manage information.

A Workshop on Identifying Organizational Needs and Solutions

Erik Radio, MS Candidate, radio1@illinois.edu

This workshop was developed as a part of an instructional series to equip students with organizational skills to serve them in their academic careers and beyond. This poster focuses on the theory and practice of PIM.

The Twin Pillars of Effective PIM Strategies + Workflows

Strategy 1 - Identifying the Need Not a one-size-fits-all structure, but rather, determining the organizational need demanded by the information (academic vs. personal) Strategy will develop out of the nature of ones work and evolve over time to match needs and newer technologies Strategy 2 - Finding Inspiration While strategies will be unique to each person, it is useful to see how others in similar situations are managing their own information How are other students coping with email overload? Citation management? www.usesthis.com Workflows - Strategies into Action Task-specific, for example, Email processing: What does the message mean to me? What action, if any, does the message require of me? What is the most elegant & efficient way of responding to this email?

Tools + Technologies
Based on my strategy, what kind of tool best fits my organizational need? PIM is fairly tool-agnostic Some criteria: Task appropriate Usable/enjoyable Cross-platform capabilities Information Sharing

Citation Management

Web Clipping/Bookmarking

Special thanks to Jared Dunn and Merinda Kaye Hensley.