Klen Copic Pucihar, Matjaž Kljun, John Mariani and Alan John Dix
Personal projects are any kind of projects whose management is left to an individual untrained in project management and is greatly influenced by this individual’s personal touch…
Abstract
Purpose
Personal projects are any kind of projects whose management is left to an individual untrained in project management and is greatly influenced by this individual’s personal touch. This includes the majority of knowledge workers who daily manage information relating to several personal projects. The authors have conducted an in-depth qualitative investigation on information management of such projects and the tacit knowledge behind its processes that cannot be found in the organisational structures of current personal information management (PIM) tools (file managers, e-mail clients, web browsers). The purpose of this paper is to reveal and understand project information management practices in details and provide guidelines for personal project management tools.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews similar to that in several other PIM exploratory studies were carried out focusing on project fragmentation, information overlap and project context recreation. In addition, the authors enhanced interviews with sketching approach not yet used to study PIM. Sketches were used for articulating things that were not easily expressed through words, they represented a time stamp of a project context in the projects’ lifetime, uncovered additional tacit knowledge behind project information management not mentioned during the interviews, and were also used to find what they have in common which might be used in prototype designing.
Findings
The paper presents first personal project definition based on the conceptualisations derived from the study. The study revealed that the extensive information fragmentation in the file hierarchy (due to different organisational needs and ease of information access) poses a significant challenge to context recreation besides cross-tool fragmentation so far described in the literature. The study also reveals the division of project information into core and support and emphasises the importance of support information in relation to project goals. Other findings uncover the division of input/output information, project overlaps through information reuse, storytelling and visualising information relations, which could help with user modelling and enhancing project context recreation.
Research limitations/implications
On of the limitations is the group of participants that cannot represent the ideally generalised knowledge worker as there are many different kinds of knowledge workers and they all have different information needs besides different management practices. However, participants of variety of different backgrounds were observed and the authors converged observations into points of project information management similarities across the spectrum of different professions. Nevertheless, its observations and conceptualisations should be repeatable. For one, some of the issues that emerged during this work have been to different extents discussed in other studies.
Practical implications
The empirical findings are used to create guidelines for designing personal project information management tools: support the selective focus on information with the division into core and supportive information; visualise changes in project information space to support narratives for context recreation; overcome fragmentation in the file system with selective unification; visualising project’s information relationship to better understand the complexity of project information space; and support navigating in project information space on two axes: time and between projects (overlaps through information).
Originality/value
The study presents a longitudinal insight into personal project information management. As such it provides a first formal definition of personal project from the information point of view. The method used in the study presented uses a new approach – sketching in which participants externalised and visualised personal information and projects they discussed. The insights derived from the study form design implications for personal project management tools for knowledge workers.
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The term “medical” will be interpreted broadly to include both basic and clinical sciences, related health fields, and some “medical” elements of biology and chemistry. A…
Abstract
The term “medical” will be interpreted broadly to include both basic and clinical sciences, related health fields, and some “medical” elements of biology and chemistry. A reference book is here defined as any book that is likely to be consulted for factual information more frequently than it will be picked up and read through in sequential order. Medical reference books have a place in public, school, college, and other non‐medical libraries as well as in the wide variety of medical libraries. All of these libraries will be considered in this column. A basic starting collection of medical material for a public library is outlined and described in an article by William and Virginia Beatty that appeared in the May, 1974, issue of American Libraries.
Since the shootings at Kent State University (KSU) in 1970, students and activists have held commemorative ceremonies to mark that event. The university ignored that past and…
Abstract
Since the shootings at Kent State University (KSU) in 1970, students and activists have held commemorative ceremonies to mark that event. The university ignored that past and decided to build a gym annex covering part of the land on which the National Guard had maneuvered in 1970. Led by the May 4th Coalition, activists sought to persuade the university to change the building's location. The student concern was the preservation of what they viewed as “sacred” ground which would be buried underneath the annex. At the 1977 annual commemoration speakers raised the annex issue and the newly formed May 4th Coalition ultimately occupied the site of the planned building with a tent city. That occupation was forcefully removed, and the university did build the facility where planned. The physical and spatial aspects of the commemoration of the Kent State shootings did, over time, lead the university to take on the responsibility to memorialize that conflict. This paper focuses on two interrelated issues: (1) the efforts of the May 4th Coalition and residents of Tent City to block or move the gym annex and (2) the refusal of KSU for years to recognize the broad significance of the events of May 1970 and their attempt to ignore or bury it.
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Ignacio Vélez‐Pareja and Joseph Tham
It is a well known problem the interactions between the market value of cash flows and the discount rate (usually the weighted average cost of capital, WACC) to calculate that…
Abstract
It is a well known problem the interactions between the market value of cash flows and the discount rate (usually the weighted average cost of capital, WACC) to calculate that value. This is mentioned in almost all text books in corporate finance. However, the solution adopted by most authors is to assume a constant leverage D%, and hence assume that the leverage gives raise to an optimal capital structure and the discount rate is constant. On the other hand, most authors use the definition of the Ke, the cost of leveraged equity for perpetuities even if the planning horizon is finite. Among these authors we find the work of Wood and Leitch W&L 2004. In this article we wish to analyse the claim made by W&L 2004 in the sense to have found an iterative solution to the problem of circularity that results in a “near” matching with the Adjusted Present Value APV, proposed by Myers, 1974. They use as the basic principle the fact that there is a “near” constant relation between Ke the cost of equity and Kd the cost of debt. They consider as well that the cost of debt Kd is not constant and changes proportionately with the leverage D%. We propose a very simple and precise approach to solve the above mentioned circularity problem.
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Religious and secular pilgrimages present rich opportunities for investigating information activities in an original and intriguing context. While the Information Science…
Abstract
Purpose
Religious and secular pilgrimages present rich opportunities for investigating information activities in an original and intriguing context. While the Information Science community has previously shown interest in digital expressions of religion and spirituality, discussion on pilgrimage is at a nascent stage. The purpose of this study is to conduct an in situ investigation of how pilgrims record, curate, and share their experiences.
Design/methodology/approach
A field ethnography was conducted while walking with, observing and interviewing pilgrims along the Camino de Santiago, a popular European pilgrimage and UNESCO World Heritage route. Data collected from 25 semi-structured interviews and participant observations were thematically analysed within a theoretical framework combining Stebbins' contemplation and Nature Challenge Activity in serious leisure and Hektor's model of information behaviour.
Findings
This study expands the interpretation of pilgrimage by introducing new insights into pilgrims, different types of mobilities, spaces and objects, and social interactions. By using field ethnography and close-up observations of praxis, pilgrimage is analysed as a socio-technical process and discussed literature within and beyond Information Science. The work presents new understandings of the interplay between spirituality, embodied information practices, physical and online social interactions, analogue and digital media before, during and after these journeys and legacy aspirations.
Originality/value
The study is original in its combination of theoretical models and their ethnographic in situ application. It contributes to a more in-depth, in-the-field understanding of how pilgrims document their experiences via a rich palette of old and new media, the dynamics of using digital technologies during such physical and inner journeys and pilgrims' sharing practices. Implications for serious leisure and information practices are discussed, from theoretical to practical challenges and opportunities offered by pilgrimage experiences.
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To outline how psychology as one of the original approaches to human‐computer interaction (HCI) has formed a key part of the HCI literature, and to discuss the need for…
Abstract
Purpose
To outline how psychology as one of the original approaches to human‐computer interaction (HCI) has formed a key part of the HCI literature, and to discuss the need for psychological approaches to HCI and system development.
Design/methodology/approach
The contributions to the journal Human‐Computer Interaction is examined from the journal's start in 1985 up to the millennium. The analysis focuses the three main elements, task, user and computer, in the classic study “Psychology of human‐computer interaction” from 1983.
Findings
Provides information about authorship, and form and focus of research published. The paper concludes that already from the beginning, HCI researchers too narrowly used Card et al.'s analytical framework. Today it has developed into a sub‐theory within a multidisciplinary HCI science and in this role it continues to be an important cumulative factor in HCI.
Research limitations/implications
The main conclusion about the role of psychology in HCI only applies to the mainly US authors who published in the journal investigated in the given period. European research focusing on information technology and people may differ in important ways.
Practical implications
A much needed discussion of a central document of historical importance tying together many HCI researchers and a range of HCI studies.
Originality/value
This paper fulfils partly the need for meta‐analyses of the psychological approach to HCI.
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Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) represents a new approach to understanding the process of human communication. Developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the early 1970s…
Abstract
Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) represents a new approach to understanding the process of human communication. Developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder in the early 1970s, it is derived from linguistics, psychology, neurophysiology, kinetics, and cybernetics. NLP is designed to help its users—whether they are therapists, salespersons, or teachers—more quickly gain rapport with their subjects.
Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and…
Abstract
Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.