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This paper and research behind it aim to explain key elements behind construction project data management by looking at actual operations. The construction project management is heavily built around document control and relating events such as change orders, submittals, transmittals and requests for information. These functionalities are usually forming the core of electronic data/document management systems (EDMS), and more recently solutions based on Building Information Modelling (BIM) technologies. A growing share of buildings construction projects are designed and documented by using BIM applications. BIM applications can form spatially organised access to project data and documents which, if widely applied, can change the world of EDMS solutions.

This paper presents results of a research effort where the use of EDMS was studied in 15 building construction case projects. The research focus was on EDMS structure, usage of EDMS in each case project and EDMS use models.

The gained results explain content and characteristics of current practice. It is considered that useful knowledge can be learned from the present used of EDMS in building construction projects. This understanding can help our sector to move towards more advanced solutions.

The obtained research data are a certain kind of building development projects. These were renovation and change projects of existing buildings.

Although the main stream of research has been technology-driven, the research behind this paper is targeting for new knowledge over the characteristics of EDMS use.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate and model the process of organizing personal information in digital form in the context of everyday life.

A background survey, a diary study and two interviews were conducted with each of the 18 participants, who are information users in social science academic environments. In particular, the personal information organization process (PIOP) model was developed by tracking and analyzing 143 organization events.

The PIOP model consists of six stages: initiation, identification, temporary categorization, examination/comparison, selection/modification/creation and categorization. This model also shows actions, thoughts and decisions involved in the organization process, and 19 factors that impact the process.

This study introduces a new model that specifically shows the process of organizing personal information. This study advances our understanding of the process and informs the design and development of systems and applications that support personal information management.

State-of-the-art cloud applications are problematic for collaborative document management; their current design does not encourage active personal folder categorization. Cloud applications such as Google Drive and Microsoft’s OneDrive store documents automatically, so at no point are users directed to categorize them by placing them in folders. To encourage active categorization and promote effective retrieval of cloud documents, the authors designed an add-on “nudge” called Personal Organizer which prompts Google Drive users to categorize by storing cloud documents in personal folders. The add-on prompt is triggered when users attempt to close uncategorized or unnamed documents. The purpose of this paper is to test whether using the Personal Organizer add-on leads participants to actively store their documents in folders that they personally created, and whether this promotes more successful and efficient retrieval.

To test the add-on, the authors conducted a pretest-manipulation-post-test intervention study with 34 participants lasting over three months. In both tests, participants were asked to retrieve personal documents taken from their own “Recents” list to improve ecological validity.

Using our add-on doubled the percentage of documents that were actively stored in folders. Additionally, using personally created folders substantially improved retrieval success while decreasing retrieval time.

Implementing our findings can improve document storage and retrieval for millions of users of collaborative cloud storage. The authors discuss broader theoretical implications concerning the role of active organization for retrieval in collaborative repositories, as well as design implications.

A web site usually contains a large number of concept entities, each consisting of one or more web pages connected by hyperlinks. In order to discover these concept entities for more expressive web site queries and other applications, the web unit mining problem has been proposed. Web unit mining aims to determine web pages that constitute a concept entity and classify concept entities into categories. Nevertheless, the performance of an existing web unit mining algorithm, iWUM, suffers as it may create more than one web unit (incomplete web units) from a single concept entity. This paper presents two methods to solve this problem. The first method introduces a more effective web fragment construction method so as reduce later classification errors. The second method incorporates site‐specific knowledge to discover and handle incomplete web units. Experiments show that incomplete web units can be removed and overall accuracy has been significantly improved, especially on the precision and F1 measures.

Personal information management (PIM) is an activity in which an individual stores personal information items in order to retrieve them later on. As PIM research moves from an infant stage of exploratory studies to more rigorous quantitative ones, there is a need to identify and map variables that characterize and account for the variety of PIM behaviour. This is the aim of the current research.

In an exploratory study, 20 semi-structured 90-minute interviews were recorded and transcribed. Variables were found by comparing the behaviors of participants who represent the two extreme poles of each variable's axis (i.e. when two participants showed a high and low degree of document redundancy, the redundancy variable was identified). In a later analysis, the variables were grouped into categories.

The paper identifies 15 variables grouped in five categories: organization related variables (order, redundancy and name meaning), structure variables (collection size, folder depth, folder breadth and folder size), work process variables (attendance time and modality), memory related variables (memory reliance, dominant memory) and retrieval variables (retrieval type, retrieval success, retrieval time and ubiquity).

Future research could make use of these variables in order to: measure their distribution, find relations between them, test how they are affected by variables external to PIM (e.g. systems design) and find how they affect other dependent variables (e.g. productivity).

This is the first research that systematically explores PIM variables.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the problems of using metadata to file electronic documents as well as the problems of using a purely functional filing scheme. It aims to explore how a functional file plan can be created from a business classification scheme by inserting “metadata signpost folders” at strategic points in the filing hierarchy to create a “hybrid functional file plan”.

The paper draws on experience and published literature to discuss methods for creating a hybrid functional file plan.

The paper concludes that functional filing is the only method of filing e‐documents that can effectively support good information management practice, enabling all e‐documents to be managed in line with corporate information management policies, and that it may also be the only viable method of providing true “shared” filing in support of knowledge management and business efficiency.

The article shows that a functional filing scheme, retrieving, cross‐referencing and grouping documents by subject (or other metadata attributes) requires special measures and suggests that current IT, EDRM and related technologies may not fully meet the requirements by searching/sorting on metadata terms. It may be necessary to compromise a purely functional file plan by the inclusion of metadata “signpost” folders into the functional folder structure in order to create a hybrid functional file plan.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the favoured and almost ingrained way of managing groups of documents in systems, specifically in electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS), namely the folder, considered by many users as a sine qua non to any information system.

The most significant barrier to successful implementation of EDRMS is “culture” rather than cost. Implicit is a willingness of users to employ EDRM as their method of choice to achieve such an end. Anecdotal evidence and a real case example are shared to explore the approach to developing virtual folders to meet user requirements and organisational needs.

Staffordshire County Council's EDRMS does not employ folders. To save a document, users associate it with a level in the Council's functional business classification scheme (BCS); this is achieved through a series of “saved searches”. Metadata requirements are embedded within the BCS levels and the user chooses a title and functional association for the record.

This is a way of adopting what exists as standard technology within EDRM systems to satisfy a user need. The vital part is to firstly recognise why the barrier existed in the deployment of a functional classification scheme and further to move beyond the “face value” of why the users performed a particular methodology. More controlled and detailed research is required beyond the work that has been completed.

This paper aims to provoke thought around the need to understand perceptions around documents, records and the systems, in particular EDRM systems, that manage them.

The purpose of this paper is to explore whether user needs and preferences in organising electronic information are properly identified by records managers when implementing folder structures in electronic document and records management systems (EDRMS). The intention is also to find out to what extent user needs and preferences correspond to records management best practices.

The research was designed as a case study of a specific team at the European Central Bank. In order to look at the user needs and preferences, the research is based on the qualitative analysis of data obtained via semi‐structured interviews and direct observation.

The case study shows that users' objectives are very similar to records management objectives. Moreover, their needs and preferences stem from a number of factors that can be identified and categorised.

The research was subject to severe limitations in terms of resources, in particular the time and tools available. Similar studies should be conducted involving diverse teams at different organisations in order to fine‐tune the proposed principles and test their general applicability. Further studies could benefit from the use of IT tools to observe user behaviours.

Based on the findings, guidance principles are proposed in order to improve user acceptance of folder structures.

The paper aims to raise awareness in the records management world of the necessity of prioritising user needs as the best way to achieve records management objectives. Records managers should also work closely with IT experts in the design of EDRMS.