Personal Information Management Practices and Behaviors of Social Sciences’ Students

This study reports the personal information management (PIM) behavior of university students under the backdrop of development of information and digital technology infrastructure in Pakistan. The PIM field has been explored through various perspectives in the developed world, but hardly any studies from the developing countries, specifically from the South Asian Region were found. The present, first study from Pakistan , adopted quantitative research design based on a pretested questionnaire to collect data from a sample of 221 students of master programs who were studying in their final semesters in five social sciences disciplines under Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences at the University of the Punjab (PU), Pakistan. The key findings revealed that most frequently used tools for relocating information once found are downloads on personal computers, self-created digital document (e.g. MSWord, Excel, Google Docs, etc.), URLs and hyperlinks. URLs are the most commonly used elements to save online information for future use. The revelation of their practices establishes that they need appropriate training regarding their personal information management.