A Study of the Personal Information Management practices of Librarians

Abstract

Research Problem: Personal Information Management is an increasingly important subject as more and more of people’s work becomes information-based. Understanding the information management practices of information professionals both as a group and in individual sectors has been the focus of several investigations, but there is limited research focusing on librarians, although they are often the major interface between information professionals and other people. This study aims to discover how librarians practice work-related Personal Information Management and how they adapt to the constant changes in information technology.

Methodology: An exploratory qualitative study using data gathered from semi-structured interviews with librarians conducted in their own workspaces similar to those used in several other exploratory PIM studies, and analysed with grounded theory methods. The participants were selected from among librarians working in various branches of Auckland Libraries, who responded to a call for participants sent out in internal mailing lists.

Results: The study found that librarians have broad skills in the realm of personal information management, with many techniques found to deal with common problems in PIM such as information fragmentation. However, librarians’ strong personal skills and ability to organise their own information leads to their information regularly being difficult to find for other librarians, as many use their own idiosyncratic structures even within shared systems.

Implications: The results suggest that librarians’ ability to share information among themselves within an organisation could be improved by reducing the individual quirks of their organisation systems and increasing standardisation, if they can be convinced to use it.