ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates that email overload creates problems for personal information management: Users often have cluttered inboxes containing hundreds of messages, including outstanding tasks, partially read documents, and conversational threads. It discusses three main email functions: task management, personal archiving, and asynchronous communications. Task management requires users to ensure that information relating to current tasks is readily available. Personal archiving or filing addresses how people organize and categorize longer term information, so that it can later be retrieved. Asynchronous communication is concerned with interaction in a permanent medium across space and time. When high volume of incoming email is accompanied by large amounts of time away from their desks, this may reduce the likelihood of no-filers constructing elaborate filing systems or engaging in extensive periodic clean-ups. The key requirements for asynchronous communication are: threading to support context regeneration and the management of conversational history, and the ability to track the status of a conversation.
