Personal records on the web: Who's in charge of archiving, Hotmail or archivists?

Personal information management on social media from the perspective of platform support: a text analysis based on the Chinese social media platform policy

Purpose

In this study, specific measures adopted by the social media platforms in China supporting personal information management are investigated via surveys targeting such platforms. The purpose of this paper is to find out how social media platforms understand information management, and from which aspects and through what specific methods they provide support for information management, which contributes to understanding the issues and strategies associated with personal information management on social media.

Design/methodology/approach

The dimensions and specific contents of the current platform support provided for information management are clearly defined by performing qualitative text analysis based on the content obtained from 11 platform policies published by five representative Chinese social media platforms.

Findings

How social media platforms support personal information management on creation, collection, utilisation, sharing, storage, protection, removal and modification is identified. By analysing the status quo of support provided by the Chinese social media platform, some issues are proposed for discussion. Improved normative management is required to address the coexistence of multivalued information and management risks. However, the user rights are limited because the platform policies tend to be more focused on the perspective of the social media platform. Furthermore, the platform policy contents regarding information management are incomplete, and the applicability of these policies should be improved.

Originality/value

This study seeks to contribute to personal information management on social media from the perspective of platform support. The perspective from the platforms as the service providers supporting information management also helps identify information management challenges and potential strategies. Furthermore, combining with the personal information management perspective, this study provides a background understanding of information management under a social collaborative framework for platforms, authorities, users and memory institutions.

Peer review

The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/OIR-06-2020-0249

Modeling the process of personal digital archiving through ubiquitous and desktop devices: A systematic review

The purpose of this study is to explore Personal Digital Archiving, and its practices, reasons, and challenges in desktop and in ubiquitous environment such as desktop computers, laptops, mobile phones or smartphones, tablets, and cloud services. Moreover, it is also aimed to develop a model of Personal Digital Archiving process for desktop and ubiquitous devices. This study used Preferred Reporting Items for the Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis guidelines for searching and devising, and inclusion and exclusion criteria. The Search was conducted from selected repositories, databases, and core journals, potentially containing studies related with Personal Digital Archiving. Consequently, 21 studies were included through identification, screening, eligibility, and inclusion of studies process. It was found that people used multiple devices such as mobile phones or smartphones along with other devices. It was established that people had also used cloud services with different devices including computers and smartphones or tablets for Personal Digital Archiving. Five major categories of individuals’ Personal Digital Archiving practices, that is, backup, replication or duplication, reorganizing and updating, cleaning or removing, and migration of information were found. Moreover, emotional motives, technological causes, alternative access, easy retrieval, and task completion were the reasons to adopt Personal Digital Archiving. On the basis of findings of selected studies, researchers developed a four steps model of Personal Digital Archiving process, consisting of initiation, identification, action, and evaluation constructs. Personal Digital Archiving challenges were also identified such as the individuals had to face through the use of desktop and ubiquitous devices including technical, fragmented and overloaded information, lack of training and expertise, and psychological and miscellaneous challenges. Personal Digital Archiving process model is based on the extracted data from studies published worldwide, and it is useful for both desktop and ubiquitous devices with reference to Personal Information Management context. The findings of the study will be helpful for software designers and android application developers to design and develop users’ centered Personal Information Management software.

Impact of contexts, resource types and perceptions on information management within the personal domain among college students

Purpose

This study aims to investigate how college students' personal information behaviors were impacted by contexts, resource types and perceptions of personal information management.

Design/methodology/approach

Using an online survey, a total of 1,194 valid responses were collected from college students. The three contexts used for this study include academic, health and personal digital history. Specific scenarios, along with sets of resource types, were provided for each context.

Findings

The findings show that college students' perceptions and contexts strongly influence their activities related to personal information, and that resource types impact their activities depending on the context in which the resource types are situated. The findings of this study provide evidence of how varying factors influence personal information behaviors at different levels. Information professionals need to design their services and programs in a way that is cognizant of the factors that influence users and the challenges that users meet with in different contexts and resource types.

Originality/value

The findings of this study contribute to personal information research by providing an understanding of how context, perceptions and resource types intertwiningly influence personal information behaviors. This study provides an insight into widely accepted patterns and perceptions of personal information behavior with particular information resource types and within specific contexts.

Archival knowledge in the field of personal archiving: an exploratory study based on grounded theory

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to propose a theoretical framework to illustrate the archival knowledge applied by archivists in their personal archiving (PA) and the mechanism of the application of archival knowledge in their PA.

Design/methodology/approach

The grounded theory methodology was adopted. For data collection, in-depth interviews were conducted with 21 archivists in China. Data analysis was performed using the open coding, axial coding and selective coding to organise the archival knowledge composition of PA and develops the awareness-knowledge-action (AKA) integration model of archival knowledge application in the field of PA, according to the principles of the grounded theory.

Findings

The archival knowledge involved in the field of PA comprises four principal categories: documentation, arrangement, preservation and appraisal. Three interactive factors involved in archivists' archival knowledge application in the field of PA behaviour: awareness, knowledge and action, which form a pattern of awareness leading, knowledge guidance and action innovation, and archivists' PA practice is flexible and innovative. The paper underscored that it is need to improve archival literacy among general public.

Originality/value

The study constructs a theoretical framework to identify the specialised archival knowledge and skills of PA which is able to provide solutions for non-specialist PA and develops an AKA model to explain the interaction relationships between awareness, knowledge and action in the field of PA.

Analysis of College Students' Personal Health Information Activities: Online Survey

BACKGROUND

With abundant personal health information at hand, individuals are faced with a critical challenge in evaluating the informational value of health care records to keep useful information and discard that which is determined useless. Young, healthy college students who were previously dependents of adult parents or caregivers are less likely to be concerned with disease management. Personal health information management (PHIM) is a special case of personal information management (PIM) that is associated with multiple interactions among varying stakeholders and systems. However, there has been limited evidence to understand informational or behavioral underpinning of the college students' PHIM activities, which can influence their health in general throughout their lifetime.

OBJECTIVE

This study aimed to investigate demographic and academic profiles of college students with relevance to PHIM activities. Next, we sought to construct major PHIM-related activity components and perceptions among college students. Finally, we sought to discover major factors predicting core PHIM activities among college students we sampled.

METHODS

A Web survey was administered to collect responses about PHIM behaviors and perceptions among college students from the University of Kentucky from January through March 2017. A total of 1408 college students were included in the analysis. PHIM perceptions, demographics, and academic variations were used as independent variables to predict diverse PHIM activities using a principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical regression analyses (SPSS v.24, IBM Corp, Armonk, NY, USA).

RESULTS

Majority of the participants were female (956/1408, 67.90%), and the age distribution of this population included an adequate representation of college students of all ages. The most preferred health information resources were family (612/1408, 43.47%), health care professionals (366/1408, 26.00%), friends (27/1408, 1.91%), and the internet (157/1408, 11.15%). Organizational or curatorial activities such as Arranging, Labeling, Categorizing, and Discarding were rated low (average=3.21, average=3.02, average=2.52, and average=2.42, respectively). The PCA results suggested 3 components from perception factors labeled as follows: Assistance (alpha=.85), Awareness (alpha=.716), and Difficulty (alpha=.558). Overall, the Demographics and Academics variables were not significant in predicting dependent variables such as Labeling, Categorizing, Health Education Materials, and Discarding, whereas they were significant for other outcome variables such as Sharing, Collecting, Knowing, Insurance Information, Using, and Owning.

CONCLUSIONS

College years are a significant time for students to learn decision-making skills for maintaining information, a key aspect of health records, as well as for educators to provide appropriate educational and decision aids in the environment of learning as independent adults. Our study will contribute to better understand knowledge about specific skills and perceptions for college students' practice of effective PHIM throughout their lives.

Personal digital archiving: influencing factors and challenges to practices

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the associations of personal archiving behaviors to factors and challenges that have been assumed to affect personal digital archiving strategies.

Design/methodology/approach

This study created an online survey to understand general patterns of personal digital archiving practices and related phenomena. The survey was employed to investigate to what extent people show a certain behavior or feel certain factors and challenge when archiving personal digital content.

Findings

Some of the findings of this study regarding specific personal digital archiving practices were in accordance with existing studies. However, the associations between digital archiving challenges and archiving practices were not observed statistically significantly as assumed in previous studies. General technology efficacy and the awareness of the importance of personal records appeared to influence personal archiving practices.

Research limitations/implications

This study used Amazon’s Mechanical Turk. As this is not a commonly used internet service, the workers here could have higher than average levels of internet efficacy. This possibility may have affected the demographics, and the survey responses may be biased in this respect.

Practical implications

As the study results suggest that technology efficacy and personal heritage awareness are the influencing factors of personal digital archiving, these are the areas where information professionals can involve in assisting users for future cultural heritage.

Originality/value

This is the first study that develops measures for personal digital archiving related practices and perceptions that the previous qualitative studies have identified. With these measures, it examines the general status of individuals’ archiving strategies and the overall associations of digital archiving challenges as well as looking into other technological and personal factors.