Organization Plan

In order to streamline the scanning process I set out to create an organization plan. This plan will encompass a hierarchical filing system and data storage strategy.


Hierarchical Filing System

First, I brainstormed categories by which to organize materials hierarchically. Some of these categories were:

• Course
  
• Subject (e.g. Philosophy, Icelandic Studies, etc.)
  
• Semester/Term
  
• Education Level (e.g. High School, Bachelor, and Masters)
  
• Education Facility (e.g. Steinbach Regional Secondary School, University of Manitoba, and University of Alberta)
  
• Notes
  
• Note Booklet
  
• Tests
  
• Essays
  
• Handouts
  
• Time
  

Next, I browsed through all the materials I wanted to scan. After browsing, I decided to organize materials by course (or workshop) as every material I wanted to scan was associated with a course and many materials were already organized in this manner.

I considered organizing materials by education level followed by semester/term. This is the file system I employed while attending university. In the end I decided against this system as organizing materials by semester/term made sense when the folders most valuable (i.e. likely to be needed or used) were those in the current or most recent semester, but this value diminished once courses were finished.

While considering other filing hierarchies I determined the most important thing is being able to locate materials from a specific course. Once determined, I considered the following hierarchy: Education level, subject area, course, type of material (e.g. notes, note booklet, tests, essays, handouts, etc.), then time, date, or number for sequential ordering to mirror when materials were actually created or acquired. I decided against this system for three main reasons.

1. Subject area would not be very useful as I completed one or few courses in many areas, so this would lead to many situations where a specific subject area folder would only lead to a single course folder. 
   
2. Type of material is not particularly relevant for all courses, but may be useful for some. This led to my decision to employ type of material on a case-by-case basis. 
   
3. When materials were actually created or acquired is not particularly useful information to locate materials, all materials do not possess a date, and this would add a lot of work. 
   

After learning from the faults of the previous filing system I played around with potential hierarchies a bit more. In the end the hierarchy filing system I decided upon involved organizing materials by education facility or workshop followed by course (if applicable) in the format seen in the following example: PHIL 1200 – Introduction to Philosophy (i.e. Course Code – Course Name). Writing out the course in this manner would make it easy to determine the subject area with a simple glance. I decided on education facility instead of education level, because I completed a university level course in high school and it made more intuitive sense to organize by facility. While organizing the materials for scanning I decided against setting up rigid categories beneath the course level, because every course did not consist of the same types of materials and I would have to consult every page to be scanned in order to create relevant categories. As a result I decided to leave the creation of additional hierarchies for the scanning process where I would be in an optimal position to create relevant categories.


Data Storage Strategy

In order to ensure the accessibility of materials and ensure materials are not erased or lost I plan on saving copies of every file on two hard drives. I recently acquired a new terabyte hard drive and I also own a 320 GB hard drive. As two hard drives are unlikely to fail at the same time this should ensure copies are not lost and a new copy can be created relatively easily should one drive fail. Throughout the scanning process I plan on regularly backing up scans. In addition, I may save an additional copy of materials to a USB flash drive for ease of use and added peace of mind.