1. To have and to hold: Exploring the personal archive Joseph ‘Jofish’ Kaye, Janet Vertesi Shari Avery, Allan Dafoe, Shay David, Lisa Onaga, Ivan Rosero, & Trevor Pinch

2. Introduction To design better technologies to support archiving activities in a digital arena we have to understand personal archiving as a human practice, not just information retrieval

3. Introduction Why archive?

4. Archiving in HCI Henderson, CHI’04: Desktops Jones et. al., CHI’05: Folders Whittaker & Sidner, CHI’96: Email Bellotti et. al., DIS’02: Email, info Ducheneaut & Bellotti, interactions ’01: email habitat Whittaker & Hirschberg, ToCHI’01: personal paper archives Voida et. al., CHI’05: iTunes

5. Archiving as a Whole Archiving occurs across –media –locations –careers –time An ongoing practice of –selection –organization –collation –display –storage –retrieval –disposal

6. Methods 48 scholars, graduate students to nobel laureates Natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, engineering Interviews Retrieval tasks Archiving practices

7. Results I: The Values of Archiving Finding it later ….but also… Building a legacy Sharing resources Fears of Loss Identity Construction

8. Finding it Later no One Best Way locally optimized ceiling on maximum efficiency

9. Finding it Later “It works for me.” “It’s very hard to find things.” “..the only way to organize [my books] was alphabetically.” “…fight the hegemony of alphabetical order.”

10. Building a Legacy Goal: storage, to put things away, not to find them later. Rigid structures Unique, author built. Academics… but also families (photo albums, Flickr), corporations, etc.

11. Sharing Resources Supports necessary retrieval of materials by a large number of people. Not place to put everything, but what’s in there can be found. Very rigid structures: primary interaction is retrieval.

12. Fears of Loss “If there ever were a fire, I would grab this folder right here.” Influences entire structure of the archive Values for archiving affect the choices you make about document storage

13. Fears of Loss What happens when you can’t back up? “How do you back up a protein? How do you keep a moth alive? How do you keep a cancer cell from growing?”

14. “I never expected to experience such a strong emotional reaction to the loss of my archive … After we had survived the first chaotic weeks I had a feeling of emptiness and deprivation and I felt very fragile. Working in our new, temporary, office I felt a big empty space behind my back (the place where my books used to be) and I felt cut off from the past and uncertain about the future. It is the first time in my life I experienced such a strong attachment to things. Talking with friends and family I realized that books are an important part of my identity as an academic scholar.”

15. Identity Construction Archiving as an expression and crafting of identity Projected out to the world and back at the individual. Goffman: identity kit, tokens, the visible personal. Voida et. al.: iTunes

16. Results II: The Structures of Archiving Everyone we interviewed used both digital & analog Different tools appropriated or neglected as necessary Reproduction of similar values from analog to digital

17. Physical Space Hyper-use: Choose one tool to solve a particular problem and extend: –problems: mobility, temporality –tools: filing boxes, cabinets… applies to digital space: emails, bookmarks, etc.

18. Digital Space Physical & electronic retrieval times “Advantages” of digital: –“I print [papers] out to read if I want to give them any real respect.” –Difficulties meshing digital & analog –Computer space ‘scarce’…

19. For further research Findings may be domain specific: expand beyond academics to families, institutions, companies

20. Implications for Design Identity Construction –How you can allow users to construct the visible personal while preserving privacy Fear of Loss –Making backup visible Hyperuse –Customization, flexibility Not all data is digital

21. Conclusions Why archive? –finding –legacy –sharing –fear of loss –identity construction These values provide criteria for judging the personal archive’s success

22. Thanks Our forty-eight subjects, Phoebe Sengers, Amy Voida, Geoff Bowker, the Culturally Embedded Computing Group and the Science & Technology Studies Department, Cornell University.