Personal Information Management Competences: A Case Study of Future College Students

Abstract. The research project presented in this paper aims at modeling the media literacy competences required to organize and manage collections of in- formation in the form of personal and shared digital environments. In-depth in situ interviews were conducted with future college students (N=11). During the interviews, the informants gave a guided tour of their personal space of infor- mation, and demonstrated how they used different digital tools to organize it. We identify three dimensions of personal information management (PIM) com- petence, based on the analysis of the way our informants describe their PIM practices by referring to and articulating (1) the constraints and affordances of the tools and devices they use, (2) the activities these tools and devices support, (3) the costs and benefits of these practices for these activities, and (4) their tastes and preferences towards them