November 15, 2004

The Tension between the Personal and the Public

Cathy Marshall touched on this in her talk on personal digital libraries, and Gene addresses it in his post on personal information architecture: these new systems necessarily call into question the relationship between the personal and public.

Cathy discussed it with respect to annotations, markings, etc., that we might have in our personal digital library -- the are typically made for ourselves... what happens when they get "published"?

Gene makes a comment that the lines between individual and group construction are blurring. To me, that doesn't seem right... I think there's a tension there, a butting up of the local and the social that's not about smearing the boundaries.

Here's what I mean. Cathy began her talk thinking about her own personal library, and that got me to think of my own. One bookshelf in particular:

You can find that under
Click to enlarge

This shelf was organized by my girlfriend in a fit of spring cleaning. She doesn't really know much about the content of these books, wasn't interested in finding out, and so used the easiest organization method available -- by color.

When I first saw it, I thought it was funny, but didn't think much else of it.

Then I tried to use it.

You know what? It works *great*. At least, for known-item searching. When I had a book in mind, I could readily find it, because, in my mind's eye, I could picture it.

So, here we have an example of an organization scheme that's extremely useful to me, and likely impenetrable to others. This is what I mean when I say that "blurring" doesn't feel right. I think there's going to be an out-and-out tension to resolve.

On a somewhat unrelated manner, this also shows the potential perils of separating form and content. Form (size, shape, color) is very important, from a cognitive perspective, in helping me remember the content. If all my books were white, no matter how well they were categorized, it would take me longer to find the ones I was looking for. Form provides cues that we act on.

What are the cues in our personal digital collections?

Posted by peterme at 12:42 PM | Comments (22)
Search


Travels

See Me Travel
Archives
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
December 2005
November 2005
October 2005
September 2005
August 2005
July 2005
June 2005
May 2005
April 2005
March 2005
February 2005
January 2005
December 2004
November 2004
October 2004
September 2004
August 2004
July 2004
June 2004
May 2004
April 2004
March 2004
February 2004
January 2004
December 2003
November 2003
October 2003
September 2003
August 2003
July 2003
June 2003
May 2003
April 2003
March 2003
Archives from June 13, 2001 to January 2003
Archives from before June 13, 2001
Recent Entries
The Tension between the Personal and the Public
Subscribe to my feed:
Powered by
Movable Type 3.2