whenever i finish a big project i like to get down with some celebratory organization afterward. we just finished a grant application to imls (cross your fingers!) and now that we’re done it’s time for hanging and file folders, baby! copies of all the literature we cited, in folders. the application pieces itself, in a folder. we did a survey to get data to support our argument for the grant; IRB documents, human subjects certificates, copy of the survey in a folder.
i gathered together the documents (microsoft word, excel, adobe pdf) we wrote and put them in the same organizational structure as the print files. then i weeded through the email folder where i had been stashing all communication and got rid of any emails whose only content was, “okay, yes. let’s move that to section 2.” what i left behind are emails where we made big decisions, but only keeping the latest one in the thread.
now that everything is all organized it will be easy to find things in case we have to refer back to any documentation of our process. and now, on to the next project!
Fireworks / Nikita (http://www.flickr.com/people/malfet/relationship/) / CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/)
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