Navigation, organization, and retrieval in personal digital libraries of email

Abstract

Electronic mail remains the dominant application for the Internet and is the most ubiquitous type of personal digital library collection. Existing research on email includes studies of use, visualization, categorization and retrieval. [1] [4] [5] [2] This paper makes two contributions. First, I describe user interviews that revealed problems in current email systems, including role conflict, high cognitive overhead associated with organization and retrieval, inability to navigate conversations, and difficulties in addressing messages. Next, I describe a prototype system that addresses many of these problems through improvements in the message store, query interfaces, authority control, and support for identity and roles.