Reviews for Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management

The average rating for Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management based on 2 reviews is 1.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-05-24 00:00:00 Mike Schlegel I thought this book would be better. I found it vague, repetitive, and not practical. It doesn't help that it was written when people were still using PDAs like the PalmPilot for PIM. Although some of the book's predictions are prescient, such as predicting the downfall of PCs and the all-engrossing nature of smart phones, some are not that profound. A smart phone feature to automatically hold calls when you are in an important meeting is touted several times during the book. I guess turning off the ringer is too complicated. The book presents dozens of ways we can lose information, but few real suggestions on how to prevent that loss. I guess I was also annoyed that it is so "textbooky." Sidebars are in different colors for each chapter (the white text on yellow chapter was unreadable). There is so much padding that you could use the book as a pillow. About the only useful idea I got from the book is the distinction between reference collections and project collections of data. A lot of the focus of the book is on application-neutral search functions (i.e. searching for something simultaneously in email, documents, the web). This is already implemented in features like the Mac's spotlight search. In other words, a lot of the wishlist for the future of PIM in the book is already here. Not the book's fault, but it definitely makes the book less useful in 2017 than it was when written. I sometimes enjoy the nostalgia of reading older books on computing, but when the book gets mired down by subjects like the author's criticisms of iTunes v 6.0, I just get bored. I am interested in PIM, so normally I would recommend that the book be updated, but I won't, since I'm pretty sure I wouldn't reread it regardless.

Review # 2 was written on 2019-02-23 00:00:00 Travis Williams Personal information management as ticket to the good life, also feat. inspirational one-liners from Thoreau, MLK ... hard pass. (HOLD ON there is a Judy Garland quotation. Wavering.) Seems like a good clue to the attitudes in which this area of research generally grounds itself.