Module 4 Task - Future use reflections

Future seeker

Depending on the context, for future use, I would generally use the annotations/reviews/notes I have written on a source to refer back to, to decide if further review was required – eg would it fit my requirements at the time?

If I decided that the source (site, article, paper etc) was worthy of a further look, I would (initially) go to my del.icio.us site to see the original I had captured (or the printout of the article which I have also used as a tag on del.icio.us).

Developing a ‘library’ of abstracts or annotations is a valuable resource – not only for this unit but for future units. Having a review in your own words makes it much quicker to sift through the data one has collected.

The original ‘snapshot’ of the site is useful for recoding info such as URL, date (for ‘currency’ judgements), but does not take into consideration the context that I need the information (or the key words or tags that I will use to remember it.

In the Information and attention concept, Goldhaber states that successful websites “are those which capture and hold the increasingly distracted attention of Internet users amidst a swirling mass of informational options.” (Allen, n.d.)

I would add to this that it’s not only websites need to capture and hold our attention, but on a micro level, information or data. When you try to remember where you’ve stored something, additional cues (such as a robust filing system, or tags, are very useful to aid retrieval.

There is much merit in developing a Personal Unifying Taxonomy (PUT). “A PUT is essentially a classification scheme customized to the life of its owner. It reflects various activities, people and areas of interest in a person’s life — past, present and future.” (Jones, 2004).

Even when trying to retrieve information that I have bookmarked and tagged within the past month, I have found that I have had to add to or edit the existing tags in order to make them more searchable, so I hope that they will make more sense to my ‘future seeking’ self, eg ‘print’ to signify that I have a printout of the information, the title of the article in the tags (as I have found that I am searching via this currently) and on further reflection, will mostly likely include ‘11’ as a cue that I originally bookmarked the info during this unit. After reading about PUTs, a recent aim is to develop one of my own.


For external users, the original ‘snapshot’ of information would probably best help them judge if the site was useful or of interest to them, as, it is highly likely that they will have a very different requirements, agendas, opinions or world view to me. What I may find fascinating, they may find dull, what I find very useful, they may find useless.

A ‘neutral’ opinion (such as an abstract) would be most useful, where an annotation or review would be helpful from a peer or social aspect (eg for other people studying Net11 or similar units), to aid research and evaluation – eg if most of the annotations or opinions of a source were very negative, this would likely encourage me to move on to other sources (I would still investigate though - as everyone is entitled to their own opinion!).


References

Allen, M. et al, n.d. Internet Communications Concepts Document (WebCT, Net 11 Studies) Retrieved 6 June, 2008, from http://webct.curtin.edu.au/SCRIPT/305033_b/scripts/serve_home

Jones, W. (2004) Finders, keepers? The present and future perfect in support of personal information management. First Monday [Online], Volume 9 Number 3.
Retrieved July 28, 2008, from http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue9_3/jones/