Classical/rule based model seems to apply least. Kwasnik’s (footnotebegin)Kwasnik, Barbara H. 1989. “The influence of context on classificatory behavior.” PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ.(footnoteend)rules for classification of office documents derived from smaller decisions/considerations more like other approaches.
Exemplar/prototype/similarity based models. Seems to apply a bit. Case’s (footnotebegin)Case, Donald Owen. 1986. Collection and organization of written information by social scientists and humanists: A review and exploratory study. Journal of Information Science 12, no. 3: 97-104.(footnoteend)importance of form, even outside the computer. The importance of topic as classificatory cue. But a good fit? Prototype theory, especially, seems problematic. Is there a prototype document for my “important papers” file? etc. I don’t think so. The only thing really similar among the items is that they’d all be a pain in the arse to replace, especially without the other things in the file. But this isn’t a necessary or sufficient feature for inclusion in the file. Heh, it’s my own ad-hoc (goal derived) subcategory for the canonical example: things to save from my house in the event of a fire. Subcategory, because the overall category also contains laptop and cats.
The theory theory (probably my favorite name ever). Given the findings in PIM about the importance of beliefs about future use for keeping decisions and classification, (footnotebegin)Kwasnik, Barbara H. 1989. How a personal document’s intended use or purpose affects its classification in an office. In Proceedings of the ACM-SIGIR 12th Annual International Conference on Research and Development in Information Retrieval, 207-10. New York, NY: ACM Press. ; Kwasnik, Barbara H. 1991. The importance of factors that are not document attributes in the organisation of personal documents. Journal of Documentation 47, no. 4: 389-98.(footnoteend) this seems to make a lot of sense. The theory theory also seems to fit with the Sense-Making approach, with its focus on individual as expert and theorist.
Goal derived categories (ad hoc). Yes. Related to intended use as mentioned above. “Things I need to work on PIM lit review” is one way I have organized my personal information environment.
Maybe go through all the cues for document classification/placement/dispensation noted in PIM research and think of what sort of categorization is going on behind it?
I suspect I may draw very spurious connections between these concept/category theories and the categorization/organization of artifacts, but I wouldn’t be the first…