Users expend effort to manage their personal information space, but tend to organize only when necessary. A larger archive requires more organization and the poor scalability of current tools force users to find new ways to organize bookmarks. Users with more bookmarks employ more sophisticated means of organizing. The structure of a user's personal archive facilitates efficient retrieval based on expected use. Representation issues hinder retrieval because the titles of bookmarks are often not descriptive.
Users develop a personal, gestalt view of the Web through use.
A user's bookmark archive is a personal information space with five principles paralleling those of a complex information space. As a user's bookmark archive grows, it can begin to exhibit the properties of a complex information space. Users are continually challenged with maintaining an effective personal Web information space. Our future research will apply these results to the design of more usable Web browsers and bookmark management tools. Linda Tauscher provided us usage data and Bruce Homer helped with the analysis.