The Scale and Structure of Personal File Collections

Although many challenges of managing computer files have been identified in past studies -- and many alternative prototypes made -- the scale and structure of personal file collections remain relatively unknown. We studied 348 such collections, and found they are typically considerably larger in scale (30-190 thousand files) and structure (folder trees twice taller and many times wider) than previously thought, which suggests files and folders are used now more than ever despite advances in Web storage, desktop search, and tagging. Data along many measures within and across collections were log normally distributed, indicating that personal collections resemble imbalanced, group-made collections and confirming the intuition that personal information management behaviour varies greatly. Directions for the generation of test collections and other future research are discussed.