Today I completed the first real trial of a Maintenance Plan using the Plan I created for my Photos collection in 2015. It was one of the first Plans I’d put together so is slightly different from the current template (version 2.0 dated 2018). However, both have the same broad structure so the exercise I’ve just completed does constitute a real test of the general approach.
Overall, it went well. In particular, having a step by step process to follow was very helpful; and I found it particularly useful to write down a summary of what I’d done in each step. This helped me to check that I’d dealt with all aspects, and gave me a mechanism to actively finish work on one step and to start on the next. I found this to be such an effective mechanism that I modified the current Maintenance Plan Template to include specific guidance to ‘create a document in which you will summarise the actions you take, and which will refer out to the detailed analysis documents’. It’s worth noting that I was able to include this document as another worksheet in the collection’s Index spreadsheet, along with the Maintenance Plan constructed in 2015 and the Maintenance Plan I have just constructed for 2025. Being able to have all these sub-documents together in one place makes life a whole lot easier.
The exercise also identified another significant shortcoming of the template – it includes no details about the collection’s contents and their location(s). Consequently, an additional ‘Contents & Location’ section has been included at the beginning of the template.
The Photos collection has certainly benefited from the exercise; and the experience has enabled me to make some useful modifications to the template. I intend to tackle the second test of the Maintenance Plan (for the PAW-PERS collection) in the next few weeks, and will then publish an updated version 2.5 of the Maintenance Plan template which will include all the refinements made in the course of these two trials.