In his book, “Transforming Technologies to Manage Our Information: The Future of Personal Information Management, Part 2,” Research Associate Professor William Jones focuses on technologies that will alter the practice of personal information management (PIM).

Jones segments technologies by user activity including: ways to interact with technology to input information and display information; ways to save information, including ‘life logs’; personalized search options; ways to structure information to keep and to share; and consideration of the future of PIM. 

The goal of PIM is to help people access the right information at the right time, in the right place, in the right form, and of sufficient completeness and quality to perform the current activity. Tools and technologies help so that people spend less time with burdensome and error prone actions of information management and have more time to make creative, intelligent use of the information at hand in order to get things done.

In addition to PIM, Jones has published basic research in cognitive psychology, information retrieval and human-computer interaction.

About the book
Published by Morgan & Claypool in October 2013, the book is available in electronic format. One reviewer noted, "Prof. Jones' style & tone is very accessible and pleasant. The content is excellent and should find a wide audience among non-specialists as well as would-be specialists. And I hope that this book helps to encourage more specialists to enter this important new field."