By Isaac Gillis, RA and Diba Seddighi, RA

Introduction
Shared drives offer great space for teams to document and store files. Although these drives serve as an excellent tool for many, they often become bogged down with outdated or redundant information. This is due to a lack of general oversight of the drive. Our shared drive contained a collection of files and resources that had not been reviewed since inception of the drive, and for this reason we felt it was important to take organizational measures. This was done to improve quality and efficiency of information sharing for the research team.

What Happened
As a team we took a three step approach to ensure the work we were conducting was indeed improving the shared drive. This includes researching, inventorying, and altering. During the researching process we researched best practices of organizing, storing, and managing files on shared drives. We also reviewed the files, structure, and organization of the existing shared drive. This was done in an effort to obtain more knowledge about what processes we could implement as a team, and identify characteristics unique to our drive. The next step within our organizational process was conducting a comprehensive inventory analysis. We recorded information on each file to understand what state the shared drive was in, and what direct changes we could make to improve the efficiency of our drive. The final step within our organizational process was altering the official information within the PedEOL drive. During this phase we primarily altered the names and location of many files and folders within the drive. In order to keep the team educated about the decisions that we took, several presentations were developed and shared with the team.

What’s Happening Next
Designing and identifying a process of next steps is crucial in maintaining organization with the PedEOL shared drive. In order to maintain the current level of organization the team will have to work in a collaborative way, and continue to implement the measures that were discussed. Measures such as using a universal naming convention, and ensuring files are placed correctly will continue to be used so the work efficiency of the team can be ensured.