text: In this paper, we report on findings from an ethnographic study of how people use their calendars for personal information management (PIM). Our participants were faculty, staff and students who were not required to use or contribute to any specific calendaring solution, but chose to do so anyway. The study was conducted in three parts: first, an initial survey provided broad insights into how calendars were used; second, this was followed up with personal interviews of a few participants which were transcribed and content-analyzed; and third, examples of calendar artifacts were collected to inform our analysis. Findings from our study include the use of multiple reminder alarms, the reliance on paper calendars even among regular users of electronic calendars, and wide use of calendars for reporting and life-archival purposes. We conclude the paper with a discussion of what these imply for designers of interactive calendar systems and future work in PIM research.
  @cite_22: 
  @cite_9: This paper reports a study of Personal Information Management (PIM), which advances research in two ways: (1) rather than focusing on one tool, we collected cross-tool data relating to file, email and web bookmark usage for each participant, and (2) we collected longitudinal data for a subset of the participants. We found that individuals employ a rich variety of strategies both within and across PIM tools, and we present new strategy classifications that reflect this behaviour. We discuss synergies and differences between tools that may be useful in guiding the design of tool integration. Our longitudinal data provides insight into how PIM behaviour evolves over time, and suggests how the supporting nature of PIM discourages reflection by users on their strategies. We discuss how the promotion of some reflection by tools and organizations may benefit users.
  @cite_6: Email is one oftl most successful computer applicmiom yet devised. Our empin :al ct ta show however, that althongh email was origiraUy designed as a c nmunica ons application, it is now used for tional funaions, that it was not designed for, such as tab management and persona afoOt v rig. We call this ernt l oveHoad We demonstrate that email overload creates problems for personal information manageaa,cnt: users eden have cluttered inboxes cor mining hundreds of n :age ¢, incl rling outstanding tasks, partially read documents and conversational threads. Furthermore,, user attemt:Xs to rationalise their inbox by ing are Ron unsuccessful, with the consequence that important rr ges get overlooked, or "lost" in archives. We explain how em l over oad ng arises and propose technical solutions to the problem.
  @cite_34: Bookmarks are used as "personal Web information spaces" to help people remember and retrieve interesting Web pages. A study of personal Web information spaces surveyed 322 Web users and analyzed the bookmark archives of 50 Web users. The results of this study are used to address why people make bookmarks, and how they create, use, and organize them. Recommendations for improving the organization, visualization, representation, and integration of bookmarks are provided. The recommendations include simple mechanisms for filing bookmarks at creation time, the use of time-based visualizations with automated filters, the use of contextual information in representing bookmarks, and the combination of hierarchy formation and Web page authoring to aid in organizing and viewing bookmarks.
  @cite_20: This paper summarizes and synthesizes two independent studies of the ways users organize and find files on their computers. The first study (Barreau 1995) investigated information organization practices among users of DOS, Windows and OS 2. The second study (Nardi, Anderson and Erickson 1995), examined the finding and filing practices of Macintosh users. There were more similarities in the two studies than differences. Users in both studies (1) preferred location-based finding because of its crucial reminding function; (2) avoided elaborate filing schemes; (3) archived relatively little information; and (4) worked with three types of information: ephemeral, working and archived. A main difference between the study populations was that the Macintosh users used subdirectories to organize information and the DOS users did not.
  @cite_12: A study explores the way people organize information in support of projects ("teach a course", "plan a wedding", etc.). The folder structures to organize project information - especially electronic documents and other files - frequently resembled a "divide and conquer" problem decomposition with subfolders corresponding to major components (subprojects) of the project. Folders were clearly more than simply a means to one end: Organizing for later retrieval. Folders were information in their own right - representing, for example, a person's evolving understanding of a project and its components. Unfortunately, folders are often "overloaded" with information. For example, folders sometimes included leading characters to force an ordering ("aa", "zz"). And folder hierarchies frequently reflected a tension between organizing information for current use vs. repeated re-use.
summary: In the field of Personal Information Management, the management of various information collections such as files @cite_20 , folders @cite_12 , email @cite_6 bookmarks @cite_34 and cross-collection issues @cite_9 @cite_22 have been studied widely. Calendars are an important part of users' personal information, and this domain can benefit from a re-examination in the wake of electronic and ubiquitous calendar systems.