Review: The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff

The Science of Managing Our Digital Stuff by Ofer Bergman
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

Not quite what I was expecting from a Gildan Media audiobook. The last twenty or so years I have worked in “content management” software, where storing and finding electronic files is required in order to create value from the content. I’ve read about the research into these issues over the years. This book is a survey of research on how people store files and the mental and technological processes people use to find files in a computer. I’ve always likened the two main ways to find information, browsing through a folder tree structure or searching, to the dichotomy between the sod-busters and the ranchers in the old west. The sod-busters were big on separating their fields, with barbed wire, in order to demark their territory. That is like folders – people use folders to mark, or categorize, their fields. Ranchers were used to the world with no fences and would run their cattle through whatever land was in the way going to high ground or market. This seems like searchers, those who disregard categorizations that have been put in place, writing a narrow or broad search term to find their quarry. The authors recognized these main classifications, but added additional classifications, such as tagging or group tagging. These different ways to categorize and/or search for content are described with seemingly endless academic studies. Who knew there were so many studies done? The compilation showed that every strategy had its place, but people tended toward hierarchy in order to better find their files.

The authors surprisingly disregarded some of the capabilities common in corporate content management software that could be used for personal information management. For one, tags can be displayed as folders, allowing for a broad hierarchy view of your content. Tags should be considered virtual folders. Also, I didn’t catch any mention of using what I’d call “virtual documents”, allowing a single document or file to appear in multiple places in a folder hierarchy. This feature of many content management systems (somewhat duplicated with Windows shortcuts) would solve many of the problems that were brought up, but I didn’t hear it mentioned. Being research-based, the book also underreported some of the newer capabilities in the market – think Google Photos autoclassification of pictures that creates folders of pictures by person in the photo (or even by pet).

I read this book hoping it would provide new perspective on retrieval that I could offer to the people and companies I work with, while also hoping I found a new “better way” to handle my own content management chores with personal photos, emails, documents, and the like. About 80% of the book was about studies that appeared to be very basic. The final 20% is where the authors got around to discussing some alternative strategies. While these were not groundbreaking, they weren’t commonplace in what I’ve seen in the market, and I found this last section of value.

The writing was very repetitive. This is not what you would call a business book. This is an academic book. I wasn’t expecting an academic audiobook from Gildan Media – Your Coach in a Box, who I thought only publishes business books. Had I realized that MIT Press published the hardcover, I’d have been more prepared for the possibility of it being academic. There is nothing practical about managing files in this book. This is not a how-to. If you are looking for methods to put into practice, look elsewhere. Best use of the book - if you are looking for ideas for creating new software to help people manage their personal information, you can find some ideas here, as well as explanations for why people use folders and search.

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