On a daily basis users struggle to organse and re-find their stored documents, photos, emails, etc. Personal Cross-Media Information Management investigates the opportunities to provide the user with an alternative to the Desktop Metaphor where we step away from the file hierarchies used to store our information. Our cross-media PIM system is a solution which unifies all organisational structures such as email, bookmark and file hierarchies but also the physical classification structures such as bookshelves or piles of papers on the desk. This approach to PIM makes it possible to construct our own personal cross-media information space with less fragmentation of the information.

By providing a tool for centralising all these possible ways of storing our information, we allow the user to re-find the information no matter where or how the information has been stored. Often, users only need information which is relevant in a certain context, such as the slides of a course when studying for that course. Therefore, we include a context-aware component to provide the user with the context-relevant information instead of the currently used static file system.