title: A qualitative study on personal information management (PIM) in clinical and basic sciences faculty members of a medical university in Iran.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Personal Information Management (PIM) refers to the tools and activities to save and retrieve personal information for future uses. This study examined the PIM activities of faculty members of Iran University of Medical Sciences (IUMS) regarding their preferred PIM tools and four aspects of acquiring, organizing, storing and retrieving personal information.
  
  
  METHODS
  The qualitative design was based on phenomenology approach and we carried out 37 interviews with clinical and basic sciences faculty members of IUMS in 2014. The participants were selected using a random sampling method. All interviews were recorded by a digital voice recorder, and then transcribed, codified and finally analyzed using NVivo 8 software.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The use of PIM electronic tools (e-tools) was below expectation among the studied sample and just 37% had reasonable knowledge of PIM e-tools such as, external hard drivers, flash memories etc. However, all participants used both paper and electronic devices to store and access information. Internal mass memories (in Laptops) and flash memories were the most used e-tools to save information. Most participants used "subject" (41.00%) and "file name" (33.7 %) to save, organize and retrieve their stored information. Most users preferred paper-based rather than electronic tools to keep their personal information.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Faculty members had little knowledge about PIM techniques and tools. Those who organized personal information could easier retrieve the stored information for future uses. Enhancing familiarity with PIM tools and training courses of PIM tools and techniques are suggested.
authors.affiliation: Associate Professor, Department of Librarianship and Medical Information, School of Health Management and Information Sciences, and Health Management and Economics Research Center, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. shahram.sedghi@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Shahram
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Sedghi
authors.affiliation: Faculty Member, Farhangian University, Sanandaj, Kurdistan, Iran. abdollahy_n@yahoo.com.
authors.forename: Nida
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Abdolahi
authors.affiliation: PhD student of Knowledge and Information Sciences, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashahd, Iran. azimia@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Ali
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Azimi
authors.affiliation: Faculty member of Librarianship and Medical Information, Health Information Management Research Centre, Hormozgan University of Medical Sciences, Bandar Abbas, Iran. iman.tahamtan@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Iman
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Tahamtan
authors.affiliation: MSc in Librarianship and Medical Information, Central Library, Iran University of Medical Sciences, Tehran, Iran. eilamanagabdollahi@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Leila
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Abdollahi
keywords: Faculty; Information Management; Information seeking behavior; Iran; Literacy; Storage and retrieval