The issues related to research in the area of personal information such as locating an email message and bank statement on their own computers, are discussed. Personal collections are stored locally, which requires highly dynamic interfaces to help users quickly iterate queries and explore their content. This requires creating a user interface that exploits the wide and varied associations and contextual cues that can be remembered by people about their information, while maintaining the simplicity of keyword searching easy. Several tools such as Phlat are available for searching personal information, that make it easy for people to find, explore, and share their own information in the first place.