1. A computer-implemented process for storing and managing information artifacts collected using a computing device by information analysts, the process characterized by: Mapping specific, available interactive affordances of a plurality of software applications to interactive operation elements in a computer-readable form; Capturing the sequence of interactive operation elements that are performed by the information analyst, who is collecting an information artifact from at least one of the plurality of software applications; and Storing the information artifact together with the interactive operation elements as a snippet on a memory device, which is operably connected to the processor, wherein the snippet comprises a view from the software application, data contained in the view, and the sequence of interactive operation elements stored as a provenance representation comprising operation element class, timestamp, and data object attributes for each interactive operation element in the sequence.