Document Duplication: How Users (Struggle to) Manage File Copies and Versions

摘要

In personal document management, a common problem forusers is handling file and folder duplication. Duplicates canbe created deliberately (e.g. creating different versions of adocument to preserve a history) or inadvertently (e.g.copying a file to a USB drive and then back to a differentlocation). Users must spend time and effort to consciouslyand manually manage this duplication, or they run the riskof losing or overwriting data. This study of 73 knowledgeworkers combines a snapshot of their file system with aquestionnaire about their document management practicesin order to understand their document managementstructures, strategies and struggles. We find that currentpersonal document management systems (i.e. the filesystems built into modern Operating Systems) do notprovide adequate support for managing file duplication. Weexplore the systems that users have developed to workaround this deficiency and suggest some guidelines for thedesign of more effective document management systems.