William Paul Jones is a pioneer of the field of

personal information management Personal information management (PIM) is the study of the activities people perform in order to acquire or create, store, organize, maintain, retrieve, and use information items such as documents (paper-based and digital), web pages, and email mes ...

(PIM). He has written extensively on the topic, holds seven patents relating to search and personal information management, and was noted for his early contribution to

Planz Planz is an open source personal information manager developed by the Keeping Found Things Found group at the University of Washington Information School. It integrates e-mail, website links and content, computer files and folders, and informal no ...

. In 2005, he organized a seminal

National Science Foundation The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent agency of the United States government that supports fundamental research and education in all the non-medical fields of science and engineering. Its medical counterpart is the National I ...

(NSF)-sponsored event the His 2007 Annual Review of Information Systems and Technology survey ''Personal Information Management'' continues to be strongly cited. His 2008 book ''Keeping Found Things Found: The Study and Practice of Personal Information Management'' was well-received and followed by a three-book series, ''The Future of Personal Information Management'', and articles in the ''Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences''. This and other work describing a framework for understanding personal information management has been called "highly influential" by recognized researchers in the field of PIM. Jones' project ''Keeping Found Things Found'' was the subject of a 2004

New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

article and a 2005

Seattle Times ''The Seattle Times'' is a daily newspaper serving Seattle, Washington, United States. It was founded in 1891 and has been owned by the Blethen family since 1896. ''The Seattle Times'' has the largest circulation of any newspaper in Washington st ...

piece. Jones’s current work focuses on how people can manage their personal information as they age in order to better achieve optimal health, wealth and the sharing of their legacy.

Biography

Jones’s career spans institutions from business to research lab to academic. Jones received his doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon University in 1982 for empirical work and computer-based modeling of human memory. Beginning with his post-doctoral work at

Bell Laboratories Nokia Bell Labs, originally named Bell Telephone Laboratories (1925–1984), then AT&T Bell Laboratories (1984–1996) and Bell Labs Innovations (1996–2007), is an American industrial research and scientific development company owned by mult ...

(later

Bellcore iconectiv is a supplier of network planning and network management services to telecommunications providers. Known as Bellcore after its establishment in the United States in 1983 as part of the break-up of the Bell System, the company's name ...

) in Murray Hill his research turned to the relationships between human memory and computer-based systems of search and information retrieval. Jones subsequently worked in the MCC research consortium, then Boeing and finally at Microsoft before a 15-year affiliation as a research associate professor in the

University of Washington Information School The Information School (or iSchool) at the University of Washington is an undergraduate and graduate school that offers BS, MLIS, MS, and PhD degrees. Formerly the Graduate School of Library and Information Sciences (GSLIS), the Information S ...

, where he is now Research Associate Professor Emeritus. Jones has co-authored over 40 refereed publications across the disciplines of PIM, human-computer interaction,

information retrieval Information retrieval (IR) in computing and information science is the process of obtaining information system resources that are relevant to an information need from a collection of those resources. Searches can be based on full-text or other co ...

and

cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...

References

External links

Jones’ home pageJones' Google Scholar author profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Jones, William Paul Living people University of Kansas alumni Carnegie Mellon University alumni University of Washington faculty American cognitive scientists 1952 births