Organization of information
In the middle of the last century, Vannevar Bush had the observation that there is a big difference between information ordered and created by a third party, even if it was technically competent, careful, and empathetic; and that which comes from the personal narrative and structure of the world of the individual. The increase in the amount of information during the information revolution then made Bush’s Memex concept a well-known issue:
Memex was a machine for Bush, in which it is possible to store everything we come across and to arrange it appropriately. There are then ways to extract additional information from such a data structure, mine data, or contextualize the system somehow and use machine learning to recommend content or create dynamic parts of Memex, which then draws current information from the world at specific nodes. An example might be the current share price that a person may have stored in the structure of investment data or a particular company.
The purpose of Memex was not only to expand the memory but, above all, to achieve a certain symbiosis between man and technology. From the point of view of the analysis of various information processes, it is clear that we spend a massive amount of time looking for information that could be easily accessible (either through a suitable interface or even by creating it ourselves). It costs money and occupies our brain capacity, which cannot focus on what it really should. Chaos in data, whatever we imagine under this term, is one of the fundamental problems of the information society and every individual in it.
The consequences are not only economical but also have profound effects on the human psyche. In this context, we can talk about information overload or techno- stress, which are undoubtedly phenomena that significantly impact our work with information. Therefore, the discipline of personal information management gradually began to be established, which seeks to reflect the organization of personal information in a certain way, study research, and apply it in an application. Although its roots can be seen as early as the 1960s, it did not reach a more remarkable boom and actual establishment until the 1980s, with continual development in the 1990s.
Today, it is possible to see a specific shift from personal information management to self-management and management of individual processes, i.e. to a particular form of self-development activities. This is also reflected in software solutions - from those that are focused purely on work and corporate actions (such Citadel and Tine 2.0). We can see a clear shift to personal applications such as Gmail, which integrates calendar, e- emails, document management, notes or tasks, all related to one specific person.
Therefore, the organization of personal information is a topic that is of great interest not only to a large part of the population but also to developers of various tools. At the same time, it must be emphasized that there is a close dialogue between the natural person and the digital world. The individual devices are connected with specific processes that one must apply to use the services effectively for PIM (Personal Information Management). For example, we can use Remember The Milk as a regular To-Do, but it makes absolute sense in conjunction with the Getting Things Done (GTD) method, which is a complex way of dealing with tasks and managing time.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the trend was to store all data in a structured way because folders could not be searched efficiently. In recent years, the situation has gradually changed through the use of semantic desktops, especially cloud storage. Mac OS, KDE in Linux, and later also Windows, began to offer the possibility to describe files - not only by name but also to add text comments, tags, or asterisks to them. The idea was that the user would tell the document this way and easily find it in the future. At the same time, high-quality metadata would bring great possibilities in the organization of files, their visualization, searching for relationships between them, etc. However, the problem was that almost no one could do such a description of the files consistently and for a long time, so today these are functions present in the systems, but their actual use is negligible. Users want to have access to their information and work with it quickly, but at the same time, they are not able and willing to describe it effectively.
Cloud services have brought a revolution in this area - thanks to full-text search, they can replace part of PIM. It is enough for a person to remember a phrase or word used in the document's title or text. At present, this is still not a completely ideal solution (especially for languages such as Czech, where word forms change with declension or change of person). Still, it is one of the steps that point to one significant trend - if technology relies on ordinary user care and conscientiousness, it will fail and will not work. It is necessary to look for ways to effectively circumvent it and replace it with a procedure that offers the user a similar benefit without comprehensive systematicity.
Content curation can be defined as an activity during which a person acquires certain digital content, which is then further processed, organized, and made accessible to others. This simplified definition shows that one of the key themes is data management, which on the one hand, allows sharing and communication with others and, at the same time, has a solid interpretive and critical, creative component. Sometimes people can think of organizing information as a very passive process - one simply need to choose a template and then include individual objects or facts. The only creativity can be to decide which box the report, which has a border character, will be placed.
However, the reasoning is wrong or severely limited. If we want to organize information in this way, we quickly run into two practical problems. The database we build will be too large and will be constantly growing. While one forgets, and thus naturally classifies the important from the unimportant, something like this is very problematic in such a technique. A part of the network is created that has no meaningful use because it is too large. It is also not possible to set good categories in advance, which will allow some classification and categorization. Respectively, if we set them so that they are sufficiently general and robust, they usually become completely useless.
In principle, it is possible to talk about curation (i.e. the creation of a collection) for one's own needs and the needs of others. The first step is the primary acquisition of data that will form the core of the pack. Typically, there are many more that can be used afterward. The second step is a clear thematic definition - what is the theme of the collection, and for whom is it intended? This is followed by the extraction of important information, contextualization with other interesting sources, and the creation of a new digital artifact that will combine all this data. The last step is then publication and distribution to others.
It is possible to use various tools for the curatorial collection - the collection of photos can be Instagram, the reflection of a professional topic, or a text interspersed with links to professional sources. For example, in the form of a website, you can use specialized tools such as Scoop.It. There are countless possibilities, the key is to be able to think effectively about the data that is part of the collection.
A collection is something fundamentally different from a depository. It is not a set of everything connected by one term or hashtag, an uncollected pile. Still, the fact that the sub-elements are given context is critically discussed and related, evaluated not only in terms of quality but also on relevance for the purpose. Curation is based on the idea that cognition is an organic process of revealing the relationships between phenomena and incorporating them into the structure of one's mind. Therefore, it can be approached through the prism of pragmatic philosophy (or pedagogy), which will allow it to be systematically framed deeper.
This brings us to the importance of collections for our use. Learning and cognition are closely related to creating context and relationships between documents or knowledge, i.e. building a collection without any unnecessary formal requirements is an explanation of the learning process. It does not matter whether one uses a personal wiki or a mind map for a given activity. The key is to learn to think about what information to choose from the complex world around us and how to connect it with others.
Last but not least, the collection is one of the tools that will allow us to return to the already found and thoughtful things. A set of links stored somewhere in bookmarks or copied snippets in a text document are not of that nature. The goal of collections should be to build them intersubjectively - either towards a completely different person or towards oneself, which will be different due to time distance.
Personal learning environments (Personal Learning Environment - PLE) are activities, actions, and resources used by people for their learning. So it includes, for example, the books we read, news from the sites we subscribe to, social networks that help with education, or academic diaries. Returning to Bush and his concept of Memex, PLE is one of its possible manifestations, but the dimension of learning contextualizes it. The Jarvis concept is not about solving the problem of information overload but a lifelong learning process.
PLE obtain resources, but also their critical reflection, organization and bringing them into context and creation. In PLE, it is vital that learning is a social activity that is firmly embedded in cyberspace and has a dimension of creation and sharing with others; the best way to learn something is to do something, says a traditional saying. PLE continues this tradition.
It is worth emphasizing that there are a large number of models of how PLE can be designed. But we would like to emphasize their thematic framing. It should emphasize something that has recently become more of a learning center-oriented design - not a focus on tasks and specific outputs, but thinking about what kind of education one would like to have, what processes, environment, what procedures should be included. The person then discovers what they would like to develop themself and within this framework, then builds the whole PLE. For example, if we want to focus on developing creativity, we can hardly have PLE set up to be performance-oriented or to produce some widely rated and accepted artifacts.
Although we have stated that the PLE dimension is also part of most PLE models, this does not mean that the educational process itself should be task-oriented or create specific objects. A substantial portion of it can be hidden and, for example, contain reading or thinking.
In any case, the organization of information is one of the critical pillars of a compelling study. The ability to learn is closely related to the ability to include some information or stimulus from the environment in the relationships among other knowledge, critically assess it and possibly reflect it. Building a PLE and learning are, therefore, very closely linked processes. Thus, although the organization of information for the study is something special and not entirely fundamental in the sense of the common digital competencies of the citizen, we believe that it belongs to the critical discussion about the organization of information.
One of the critical current topics in information organization is personal information management. In short, it is a set of activities and approaches that lead to having information available at the right time, in the proper form, and in the right place.. Or, alternatively, it is a set of activities that people perform when they retrieve, sort, store, archive, delete, or otherwise structure information or documents in various ways.
This leads to two important conclusions:
It is a process that can be understood in the context of a particular organization or company. This is very practical if you want individual people to exchange information effectively with each other. If we imagine a chaotic person and a precise person, they will have trouble working together on one project or topic unless they have a system to help them set up procedures and tools that are acceptable to both.
It is a process that strongly affects the individual setting of each individual. That is why we are looking for ways that will be compatible with the needs of personal co-workers, but above all, will suit us. If we disagree with it, the best way to work with information cannot lead to us working. We leave him, which is a highly complex thing in the field of personal information management. The goal is to gradually improve small individual processes, not a radical change in the whole way of working with information.
This area includes more areas of DigComp - apart from the whole first dimension (although in the most proper way it belongs to the organization of information), we see overlaps mainly in digital wellbeing, sharing, and cooperation or in the field of technology and programming. Being strongly interdisciplinary, it is also relatively difficult to grasp or systematically grasp. It represents an essential cross-cutting theme or competence, which, if mastered, can be used effectively in many areas of one's life.
Taking a systematic look at personal information management, we can say that it can be observed in several sub-dimensions, i.e. in areas in which information has an individual character:
Owned by me - files and data for which I am listed as the owner (for example, on a disk, on a mobile phone, etc.). This is an area that we are probably most aware of and over which we have great control. Therefore, it pays to work with the most efficient system in this area because it will almost always generate fast and high-quality results. This can include, for example, setting up automatic backup or encryption of data, sorting files into folders, naming documents, etc.
About me - information about me, often I don't even know about it. In DigComp, it is a whole separate competence, so that we will stop here only for a short time. Information about us is one of the fundamental economic commodities and, at the same time, can be a big problem in the long run. Monitoring or deliberate work with this information is the topic of building a personal brand.
Designed for me - typically from some IS that supports my decision-making processes. At first glance, this item may seem to have little effect on it. Such an information system can be an e-mail client, an RSS reader, a weather forecasting application, or a social network. The ability to work with this is essential.
Sent/published by me - data that I enter, publish, transmit somewhere. A topic is closely related to netiquette. In general - it is very appropriate if we can work with the production of new information on the one hand transparently and openly, but at the same time so as not to harm us or anyone else. Often a misunderstood or ill-conceived context can do a lot of damage.
I have experience with - information that is based on my experience or expertise may not be explicit. This area may be the most difficult to affect, but it is also essential. On the one hand, it serves to cultivate our expertise (we surround ourselves with the information environment that develops us). On the other hand, by storing or creating information resources with our knowledge, we can help others.
Relevant to “me" - used to be able to make effective decisions or solve a problem. This topic partly falls into the area of the personal learning environment. In general, it is appropriate to build such an information environment and competencies relevant. We can always effectively solve the problems that lie ahead.
The area of personal information management is highly complicated by the fact that in addition to the division into these areas of information sessions to our private, much more often in practice. We solve how to effectively process purchases, notes, mobile phone photos, calendar notes, presentations, or favorite recipes. This view, namely working with specific information sources, is usually the first one we choose in this area. In the first step, we need to do something, like a small personal information audit, that tells us what information sources we use and what tools we work with (and how we connect with them). This step is important because the choices of tools are rarely universal in this area but are closely linked to the needs of specific users.
In general, we try to reduce the number of tools we use because it promotes clarity while minimizing the risk of simply forgetting some information in a particular area. So, for example, we can use Evernote or OneNote as follows:
At work for:
notes; clippings from the web; document storage and annotation; work with tasks; document sharing in a team; file transfer between devices; knowledge organization; archiving of scanned information; work with handwritten notes.
At home for:
digitizing receipts; writing assignments; archiving children's pictures; bookmarks and clippings from the web; reading notes; saving recipes.
If we look more closely at both enumerations, we can say that they overlap to some extent. One of the critical characteristics of digital competencies is that they do not differentiate between work and entertainment, between personal and corporate life; so making them generally suitable everywhere. If possible, the ideal way is to create a working system (in Evernote or OneNote ), which will be set up to allow operation at home and work. With the fact that specific items, folders and other data structures can, of course, have various breakdowns or shared settings. Reasonable control of work with one tool, therefore, implies a possible change of broader processes.
Although this is probably the most prominent and readily available for annotation tools, similar broader considerations can be made in other areas. For example, working with Google systems has great potential - in one environment (Google Workspace available to Gmail), you can organize mail, tasks, online meetings, manage the calendar, notes, or integrate other add-ons for team collaboration. In two tools, we can comfortably handle most of the tasks that may occur in personal information management.
In the academic environment, the Zotero citation manager is probably the most essential and commonly used tool for organizing information. It allows you to process the literature we work with, keep notes, extracts, tags, and, of course, create bibliographic records and references. When used well, it is an efficient system that allows you to build a comprehensive knowledge base that can be worked well. An excellent helper for the first use of Zotero is the Anystyle.io tool, which works by converting bibliographic records from almost any format into a form that Zotero can handle. Importing used resources from a dozen articles is a matter of a maximum of half an hour of work.
Personal information management, as well as other areas, is subject to specific fashionable or modern influences. While ten years ago, it was trendy to build a personal wiki, representing a quality information-oriented structure of information. Unfortunately, it turned out that the concept is neither user-friendly nor application-saturated enough for this form of working with information to become widespread. At present, we cannot talk about any application discourse, but we can identify more general trends that have meaning and influence in working with personal information management.
A topic that has been very much discussed lately is digital minimalism. It is based on the idea that we use so many technologies and information resources that we are often overloaded with their operation and their demand for attention rather than their ability to help us with productivity. While in the early 2000s, a lot of work was done with the idea that it is advantageous for each activity to have a specialized application that handles it as best as possible and a sound notification system. Today's discourse is just the opposite.
We can see it on several levels, which are reflected in how we work with personal information management:
The digital form is not always ideal. Often a paper solution will suffice, whether it is a bulletin board, diary, or notepad. The ability to work with paper information sources is (perhaps surprisingly) an essential part of digital competencies.
There is an increasing emphasis on a user interface that tries to be minimalist - the goal is not to have an application with as many features as possible but to create an environment that will offer only those needed and valuable features. For example, minimalist text editors are made this way, also Chrome began its introduction, which was utterly minimalist compared to Internet Explorer or Opera.
We try to reduce the cognitive burden, so we look for ways to work only with relevant and essential information with functional and simple tools. Examples: 1) The topic of social networks on which we spend an unnecessary amount of unproductive time, is intensely discussed. 2) If we are editing holiday photos, it is usually not ideal to use Photoshop but a more subtle tool.
We try to manage the time we spend with technology intentionally. While in the 1990s it was popular to“stay online", today we are trying to find ways to carry out our information as carefully as possible, but at the same time give it certain limits and order.
Digital minimalism manifests itself in many ways and represents one of the three trends that we consider to be the most important in personal information management.
Another topic we will discuss in the chapter on programming concerns the algorithmization of everyday life. Two basic ideas are essential for personal information management. The first is that in the near future, work efficiency will be primarily determined by an individual's ability to automate their activities, structure them and think about them in terms of automation. The more of his tasks he can process in this way, the more work (and higher quality and creativity) he can realize. This is crucial because it eliminates the need to work with tedious, monotonous activities while reducing cognitive stress. All this affects both satisfaction and work performance.
The second, no less important topic is related to the ability to connect different applications. Often, we have to use other systems that allow you to work with specific data, but in reality, we only need outputs or just that data. Through the interface (API), it is possible to interconnect and integrate applications, allowing both the growth of clarity and the ability to use the most suitable environment.
Although we emphasized that personal information management is primarily emotional, i.e. related to the individual's needs and preferences, we can see more and more talk about connecting our knowledge bases with colleagues. While in the 18th century, we saw large numbers of geniuses who were successful in their own right, the future belongs to those who can cooperate in teams.
Therefore, it is essential to agree on specific standard procedures and principles that it can use in its creative work. Being able to share particular information structures can be very practical and helpful. Consider, for example, the Zotero above - if team members can share reading notes and a set of annotated literature, working on a joint article or research is much faster and easier than with an individual procedure. However, this presupposes an agreement that of all citation managers, Zotero will be used, and (and above all) a certain standardization in how to work with it specifically looks, how statements, references, and labels are made. And then, of course, we must expect the ability to follow the established procedures meaningfully and regularly use them.
