Introduction to Personal Knowledge Management
What is personal knowledge management (PKM)?
What is personal knowledge management (PKM)? Well, I'd hazard a guess that we depend largely on two main sources to search for, locate, and retrieve information, either daily or for more extensive work. These two sources are the people we know and the search engines we use on a daily basis, like Google. Relying on these two kinds of sources can get us by for many things. At times, though, we will require more rigorous sources because the task at hand requires better information or the risks involved in making a decision are weighty enough to require more certainty. Good, thorough information may reduce our uncertainty or enable us to measure levels of uncertainty, and this is helpful when making decisions, writing papers, completing projects, and working at our first major job. Therefore, in this book our first learning goal is focused on information sources, and specifically to:
- become aware of the variety of information sources that exist,
- learn how to search those sources for relevant information, and
- learn how to evaluate the relevant information that we find.
This covers part of what we mean by personal knowledge management. In addition to being able to be aware of, to locate, and to evaluate information, it is also important to manage that information and to develop good workflows that help with that. What I mean is that, it can be great that we know that UK Libraries exists and that we can use it to locate good information, but if we don't use the library or other great resources available to us because we're not in the habit, then what's the point of all this good information? And what's the point in having access to all these information technologies to become informed, to do good things, and to make our lives better and easier?
I want to live in a good information age rather than merely an information age. Therefore, our second learning goal is focused on the tools and technologies that will help us build personalized information and knowledge workflows. As stated above, often the point of acquiring good information is to do some task or to make a decision. A good workflow is good if it fits our style, or our way of getting things done, because that makes the workflow more likely we'll adopt the workflow and stick with it. A good workflow also maximizes our use of good sources of information and our desired outcomes, like a paper for a class, a project for a boss, or a decision that involves some uncertainty.
Our second learning goal is, therefore, focused on personal knowledge workflows, and specifically, to:
- become aware of the tools and technologies designed to manage personal knowledge workflows,
- learn how to use these tools and technologies, and
- incorporate these tools and technologies into our personal knowledge workflows
Our final learning goal focuses on outcomes and builds off the first two goals. Specifically, our final goal is to develop habits using the tools and technologies that incorporate a variety of good sources of information to accomplish a task or make a decision. That is, we want to take advantage of the many kinds of information sources that exist, to make it a habit of using those information sources in a habitual, personalized, effective way, but in the end, we often want to accomplish some task and get things done (e.g., write a paper or create a software program) or make a decision that involves some risk (e.g., buy a house or choose a healthcare procedure). In those cases, having a personal knowledge workflow that incorporates high quality sources of information facilitates accomplishing such tasks or making such decisions.
Topic Outline
To accomplish the three goals above, this book covers:
- the differences between information sources and resources,
- how to find new kinds of information sources and resources,
- how to use reference management software,
- how to search the web and databases, and
- how to evaluate information sources.
This book is also project based. We will use the material and tools covered here to produce content for a Wikipedia article that you have selected.
Email Management
I start this book by covering two basic topics in Chapter 2: email management and generative AI. We begin with email management because email continues to be an important means of communication, especially in professional contexts, and because our inboxes can easily become overwhelming. As a result, we can miss out on important information when our inboxes are overloaded. Therefore, we will discuss ways to handle email effectively.
Generative AI
I wrote the first draft of this book during the summer of 2022, just a few months before the public release of ChatGPT and later Google's Bard (now Gemini). ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and other AI chatbots are designed to have human-like conversations. Each are super useful, interesting, and may even be fun to use. Each can produce papers, code, and help us understand more about a variety of topics and issues. To make my point, I asked ChatGPT and Gemini about what they do. Here is what ChatGPT told me in 2026:
I’m a general-purpose AI assistant. In practice that means a few big things:
I help you think — clarifying ideas, challenging assumptions, and turning vague thoughts into something you can actually use. If you’re wrestling with a concept, an argument, a research question, or a decision, I can help you pull it apart and see what really matters.
I help you make things — writing, editing, coding, outlining, planning, designing. You can hand me a messy draft, a half-formed idea, or a goal and I’ll help turn it into something structured and workable.
I help you learn — explaining topics, building intuition, finding connections between ideas, and adjusting explanations to your level and goals rather than dumping textbook prose on you.
I help you navigate information — summarizing, comparing, checking consistency, and (when needed) pulling in up-to-date facts from the web.
And I help you reflect — journaling, thinking through trade-offs, noticing patterns in what you say and do, and nudging you when you’re drifting into blind spots or wishful thinking.
What I don’t do is replace your judgment, creativity, or responsibility. I’m best when I’m acting like a very fast, very patient thinking partner: useful, sometimes challenging, occasionally surprising, but never the one in charge.
If you want, tell me what you’re hoping to use me for — quick answers, deep thinking, writing, teaching, something else — and I’ll tune myself to that.
And here is what Gemini told me in 2026:
Think of me as your versatile, AI-powered thought partner. I’m Gemini 3 Flash, and I'm designed to help you bridge the gap between an idea and its execution—whether you’re writing, brainstorming, or creating media.
Here is a breakdown of what I can do for you:
🧠 Intellectual & Creative Support
- Synthesize & Summarize: I can take complex documents or long articles and boil them down to the essentials.
- Draft & Edit: From professional emails and resumes to creative stories and code, I can help you write from scratch or polish your existing work.
- Brainstorm: I’m great for "rubber-ducking"—talk through a problem with me, and I’ll offer new perspectives, counter-arguments, or fresh ideas.
- Analyze Data: Upload a file, and I can help you find trends, explain formulas, or visualize information.
🎨 Visual & Video Creation
I’m not just about text; I have powerful tools for generating and editing visual content:
Tool Capability Daily Limit Image Generation Create or edit high-fidelity images using the Nano Banana model. 100 uses Video Generation Generate short, high-quality videos with audio using the Veo model. 2 uses
📱 Real-Time Interaction (Gemini Live)
If you use the Gemini app on Android or iOS, we can go beyond typing:
- Natural Conversation: We can talk back and forth in real-time. You can even interrupt me!
- See What You See: You can share your camera feed so I can help you with things in your physical environment (like identifying a plant or fixing a sink).
- Screen Context: I can help with whatever is currently on your phone screen.
🛠️ Technical Details
I am currently operating in the Free tier. While I am highly capable, I do have some guardrails—for example, I won't generate images of key political figures, and I'll always aim to be factually accurate while maintaining a helpful, peer-like tone.
Would you like to try something specific right now, such as generating an image or brainstorming a project you're working on?
In my experience, I have enjoyed using these services because each can make various tasks a bit easier. But there are two things to note. First, I've learned that there's a difference between using them and using them well, just like there's a difference between entering basic search queries into Google search and using advanced search queries.
Second, do not use them as a substitute for your own thinking. I like my brain and what it can do. Activities like reading, writing, coding, and conversing are activities that help me learn and help me think, and that's good for my brain and for me. I think, therefore, I am, wrote the philosopher René Descarte several centuries ago, and we want to be wary of how much we ask AI to think for us at the risk that we stop thinking for ourselves.
Therefore, we will spend a little time with generative AI and learning how to use it well and ethically. This means we will learn how to use it augment our thinking and manage what we're learning, rather than to replace our thinking.
Remaining Lessons
In Chapters 3 and 4, we focus more on the fundamentals of PKM. In Chapter 3, we learn how to use the two major information resources: the library and the web. We also learn about reference managers, which are a lot like advanced bookmarking applications. Applications like these help us build our own collections of information sources, use those sources as needed, and are key to developing a personal knowledge workflow.
In Chapter 4, we learn the basics of information search, or information retrieval, and how it works on the web and in bibliographic databases, like we find using our library. We also cover how to recognize relevant information and then evaluate it.
In Chapter 5, we begin to focus on our final project, which is to edit a Wikipedia article. We will cover additional resources, both from the library and the web, in order to find relevant information for our chosen Wikipedia page. We will also use our reference manager to help with the project. Chapter 5 is where we work to build out our personal knowledge workflow using the tools and techniques we covered in prior chapters.
Conclusion
We live in a knowledge society. Recognizing that, the goal of this course is to become effective at using the tools to locate, evaluate, and use information in order to build personal knowledge workflows. Let's get started.