A personal information management scheme using shared labels and implication links

The tree-based file management scheme is universally deployed as a personal information management approach; however, it has several weaknesses. In this paper, we identify and discuss some of the weaknesses of the tree-based approach: these include conceptual fragmentation, conceptual non-comprehensiveness, entry point restriction, and enforced ordering. After describing some previous attempts at building alternative schemes for PIM, we propose our own scheme, based on shared labels and implication links. Location addresses consist of unordered sets of labels, and each location has connections to other addresses that are subsets and super- sets of the location's address. Implication links can be used to capture implication relationships between concepts: specifying a link from one label to another means that the first label will automatically be accompanied by the second in addresses. We discuss the components of the new scheme, in addition to methods for manipulating it. We describe the ways in which the new scheme addresses the problems identified with the tree-based approach. We also present a mockup of a prototype application for browsing information repositories based on the new scheme. To conclude, we discuss future research directions, including theoretical analysis, implementation, and testing.