Paper demand response

For long I've been a subscriber of alerts from the Social Sciences Research Network (SSRN). Today I've received an email informing me of another service they are offering resulting from requests from both authors and readers:

"In response to requests from authors and readers to purchase printed and bound hard copies of papers on SSRN, we provide a 'Purchase Bound Hard Copy' service for most free PDF files in SSRN's eLibrary." FAQ

Clearly an(other) argument to build upon the affordances of paper beyond all the digital offerings available and being built that shows market demand for paper products. 

Just yesterday another argument crossed my information spaces. In short, Paula Simões compared the consumer costs associate with buying a paper Book versus buying an eBook with DRM (Digital Rights Management). Albeit the immediate cost of acquisition favouring the eBook, after the purchase the costs are much higher for the eBook then for the paper Book. Those costs, besides the need to have additional artefacts to actually decode and read the product (eReader, computer, etc), concern social factors and even use factors. While we can lend books to our friends, sell them in second hand markets, and even leave them to our family or donate them to libraries, eBooks with DRM do not allow such affordances. And this is no minor issue. The original post as receive a lot of other comments that are adding layers of costs associated with DRM (you can use the google translate if Portuguese is a barrier).

Thing is, most of us do not have the required time to undergo an exhaustive study of all our artefacts restrictions so things like DRM might go unnoticed for quiet a long time... until the day we realize by self experience or by reading about others' experiences, that DRM restricts the social behaviour of sharing information by restricting the product to a specific artefact and only for the person who acquire it.

Am I missing something or this is one more point in favour of good old paper? Since people are talking way beyond their geographic limitations, will people keep on paying for eBooks with DRM? Seems that in Portugal, two large national editors are going to have to rethink their product restrictions policies.

Visions of ideal solutions to the management of personal information collections

Bruce, H., Wenning, A., Jones, E., Vinson, J., & Jones, W. (2011). Seeking an ideal solution to the management of personal information collections. Information Research, 16(1) paper 462: 

"(...) the researchers found that observing people over time as they find, select, collect, organize, and manage information for a personal project provides an excellent context for studying the challenges of personal information management."

Information as thing

In accordance with the view of information as thing by Buckland (1999), the article by Jones, W. (2010, No knowledge but through information, First Monday, vol. 15 (9-6), September) brings back the arguments of the need to operate/manage information items and not knowledge: "Knowledge is not a thing to be managed directly. Knowledge is managed only indirectly through information". His view is directed to show that Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) should be viewed as a subset o Personal Information Management (PIM) and not as a higher level approach. 

"The ways in which an item is manipulated will vary depending upon its form and the tools available for this form. The tools used for interaction with paper–based information items include, for example, paper clips, staplers, filing cabinets and the flat surfaces of a desktop. In interactions with digital information items, we depend upon the support of various computer–based tools and applications such as e–mail applications, file managers, Web browsers, and so on. (...) Knowledge as ‘no thing’ cannot be managed directly. If we think we have knowledge ‘at our fingertips’ we are most likely touching information in some form instead. This is not to say that knowledge management is not possible. But we do so through its expression in information. There is no management of knowledge except through the management of information."

In his paper he also evokes a pictorial representation of "[i]nformation management activities viewed as an effort to establish, use and maintain a mapping between needs and information. ["illustration was done by Elizabeth Boling and is a variation of a figure that first appeared in Jones (2008)."]

Could not help myself recalling the nonsense of 'knowledge management' by Tom Wilson (2002), which as always provoked great discussions and food for thought in my journey.

Cathy Marshall (2008). rethinking personal digital archiving: part 1 & part 2. D-Lib Magazine, vol.14 (3/4):

"(...) a broadened view of how we might undertake personal digital archiving, both broadly (for consumers) and more narrowly (for academics, scholars, researchers, and students); some of these issues may also carry over into the realm of institutional archiving, although that is not my aim."

link by email from JAC

Information overload

Houghton-Jan, Sarah (2008). Being Wired or Being Tired: 10 Ways to Cope with Information Overload, Ariadne, Issue 56:

"What is information overload? 27 instant messages. 4 text messages. 17 phone calls. 98 work emails. 52 personal emails. 76 email listserv messages. 14 social network messages. 127 social network status updates. 825 RSS feed updates. 30 pages from a book. 5 letters. 11 pieces of junk mail. 1 periodical issue. 3 hours of radio. 1 hour of television. That, my friends, is information overload."

Information fragmentation

Paper proposing a framework to deal with information fragmentation. This is importante for my research since it is one of the PIM problems identified at the individual level with consequences to the group level, mainly at sharing information across project teams.

Defragmenting Information using the Syncables Framework

mobile worker

Perry, M., O'hara, K., Sellen, A., Brown, B., and Harper, R. (2001). Dealing with mobility: understanding access anytime, anywhere. ACM Trans. Comput.-Hum. Interact. 8(4), pp. 323-347:

"The rapid and accelerating move towards use of mobile technologies has increasingly provided people and organizations with the ability to work away from the office and on the move. The new ways of working afforded by these technologies are often characterized in terms of access to information and people anytime, anywhere. This article presents a study of mobile workers that highlights different facets of access to remote people and information, and different facets of anytime, anywhere. Four key factors in mobile work are identified: the role of planning, working in "dead time," accessing remote technological and informational resources, and monitoring the activities of remote colleagues. By reflecting on these issues, we can better understand the role of technology and artifacts in mobile work and identify the opportunities for the development of appropriate technological solutions to support mobile workers." [my bold]

They also talk about facets... connect with entry on facets.

Thoughts on Mobility

Falamos em objectos de mobilidade, mas quem move os objectos somos nós, as pessoas. Estes objectos de mobilidade (telefones móveis, computadores móveis, etc.) não são de facto móveis. A mobilidade de que se falava em séculos anteriores, correspondia a objectos de mobilidade, como os transportes (barcos, combóios, carros, aviões, foguetões, etc). Nesses objectos as pessoas eram transportadas, deslocadas, mobilizadas para outros locais. Nos actuais objectos que qualificamos de «móveis», somos nós que os deslocamos para lhes dar a mobilidade.

Para que os nossos telefones nos possam acompanhar e nós os possamos adjectivar de «móveis», outras infraestruturas (bem) fixas, têm que existir para nos permitir «dar mobilidade» aos nossos objectos móveis: antenas, amplificadores de sinal,....

É tão óbvio, que se torna ausente do utilizador comum. O enfoque na mobilidade humana , torna-se o ponto central do olhar. Nós somos a mobilidade.

This thoughts came stumbling after reading in a different kind of journal. One that makes use of multimedia in such a different way to present a line of thought, that my mind was receiving so many stimulus that it was hard to process all the signals i was being bombarded with:

• Vectors Journal of Culture and Technology in a Dynamic Vernacular. See also pdf with static information about WiFi.Bedouin, by Julian Bleecker. To luch the project, look for the «Launch Project» on the right side of this page.

Individual Differences in PIM

Gwizdka, Jacek & Chignell, Mark (2007). Individual Differences in Personal Information Management. in Jones, William & Teevan, Jamie, (Eds.), Personal Information Management. University of Washington Press:

(Gwizdka & Chignell, 2007, p. 11)

Note: already have Personal Information Management!

Blogging as a research tool in ethnography

[connecting links from here]: Erkan Saka (2006). Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork. Paper submitted to the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Brisbane, Qld, Australia, September 27 - 30.

Perceptions of Information Spaces

Dillon, Andrew (2000) Spatial semantics: How users derive shape from information space. Journal of the American Society for Information Science, vol. 51(6), pp. 521-528.

Frames for concepts

"A bizarre situation is the inadequacy of accepted principles regarding the setting of value of information. In spite of decades of serious usage and experience, there is no established view of economic calculation concerning information and IT-based systems." Falkenberg, E. W. Hesse P. Lindgreen B.E. Nilssen J.L.H. Oei C. Rolland R.K. Stamper F.J.M.V. Assche A.A. Verrijn-Stuart e K. Voss (1996). FRISCO: A Framework of Information Systems Concepts. IFIP WG 8.1 Task Group FRISCO.

Rapid ethnography

Millen, D. R. (2000). Rapid ethnography: time deepening strategies for HCI field research. In Proceedings of the Conference on Designing interactive Systems: Processes, Practices, Methods, and Techniques. D. Boyarski and W. A. Kellogg, Eds. DIS '00. ACM Press, New York, August 17 - 19, 2000, pp. 280-286:

"Due to increasingly short product realization cycles, there has been growing interest in more time efficient methods, including rapid prototyping and various usability inspection techniques. This paper will introduce "rapid ethnography," which is a collection of field methods intended to provide a reasonable understanding of users and their activities given significant time pressures and limited time in the field. The core elements include limiting or constraining the research focus and scope, using key informants, capturing rich field data by using multiple observers and interactive observation techniques, and collaborative qualitative data analysis. A short case study illustrating the important characteristics of rapid ethnography will also be presented."

Mobile Work survey

The Mobile Working Experience: Perspectives from Europe (2005) from IBM Business Consulting Services [a podcast from February 2006, is also available here]:

"The subject of mobile working has been studied by a number of academics and trade associations over the last few years. As the prevalence of individuals spending the majority of their work time in their homes or other non-office locations continues to rise, companies are becoming increasingly interested in the issues and effective practices associated with making these arrangements successful. While a significant amount of research has been done regarding the numbers of individuals who work remotely, the productivity savings associated with reductions in commuting time, office space, etc., only a small body of research has addressed the challenges facing individuals who work in mobile locations. These include issues around social isolation, technical support, performance management, career development, team effectiveness, employee retention, and work-life balance. This study, done in cooperation with the Economist Information Unit, surveyed over 350 mobile workers from 29 countries across Europe to better understand their perspectives and experiences."

Photographs for documenting fieldwork (ethnography)

As i will need to uncover individual and group information spaces and information needs in mobility settings, I've started taking photos of meetings taking place in work settings, outside the organizations. Due to ethics on need of preserve individual identity, collected picture do not depict human subjects but concentrate on objects of information used during meetings (archives in my flickr account classified by date taken, settings, project acronym and place, among other key words that can be added later on during data analysis).

Supporting views for this method:

Kanstrup, Anne Marie (2002, May). Picture the Practice—Using Photography to Explore Use of Technology Within Teachers' Work Practices [32 paragraphs]. Forum Qualitative Sozialforschung / Forum: Qualitative Social Research [On-line Journal], 3(2).