Personal information systems : journals and diaries as product and process

In this study, literature from the discipline of Information Science was woven together first using literature on journals and diaries from the fields of Communications, Education, Literature, Psychology, and Philosophy, and then using field interviews with experienced diarists. The research explores the role of journals and diaries as personal information tools and personal information systems, providing examples of the varied forms, structures, and uses of these documents. Journals and diaries are involved in dual informational roles. First, as information products, these documents provide information storage and retrieval. Second, as information processing tools, these documents provide a means of sorting and organizing information. Journals and diaries are highly individualized and help the diarist resolve anomalies within their internal state of knowledge, allowing them to engage in cyclical processing of information to construct a more coherent and expansive knowledge base. The information recorded and processed in journals and diaries can be new or old, objective or subjective in nature, and cover the external or internal, the vocational or avocational.