Problems of a Long-Distance Move

[kelly]

Ellen, wife and mother of three grown children, has recently completed a long distance move with her husband, George. The following posts chronicle some of the Personal Information Management challenges that she has faced throughout the duration of the move.

[kelly]

Week 1

Ellen has spent much of this week lining up a painter, an electrician, and a landscaper for her new home. She has been trying to accomplish this task from 400 miles away in her current residence; she will spend next week in the new house overseeing the work to be done. Ellen experienced difficulty in finding recommendations for people to hire, since she does not know anyone in her new town. George’s colleagues at work provided the name of an electrician, who is scheduled to come next week, and Ellen and George registered for Angie’s List to find the painter and landscaper. They chose top rated businesses for each job, and next week will prove whether these choices were successful.

Since we were speaking of recommendations, I also asked Ellen about what she does when she learns of something she might be able to use in the future. Ellen explained that she keeps a little plastic tray in the kitchen for notes about such things, which she cleans out every few months. If someone had provided a recommendation for a business, Ellen might write it on a note and place it in the tray. She had little worry that she would not be able to find the information again in the future.

[kelly]

Week 2

This week, Ellen supervised the work that was taking place in the new house. She also chose three moving companies at random from the phone book, and made appointments for their representatives to come to her current residence next week to provide estimates for the move. The recommendations from Angie’s List proved to be very good, and Ellen has said that she or her husband will make sure to provide their own positive reviews on the site.

Ellen and I also spoke about the issue of privacy, and how she makes sure that her information is kept secure. She explained to me that her and George have one credit card that they use for online purchases, and for nothing else, so that if their card number were to be intercepted, it would only be that one card that was affected, and that it would be more noticeable to them.

[kelly]

Week 4

Ellen obtained estimates from the three moving companies, one of which was wildly different from the other two. She was concerned about the accuracy of the information she received, as the difference was largely due to the estimated tonnage of her household goods, and not the price per pound of the move itself. Not being trained in the field, however, she could not determine if the outlier estimate was the one that was correct out of the three, or if the other two contained better approximations of her household. Guided by statistics, Ellen chose one of the two similar estimates, and based the decision on which company she felt was the most professional.

While on the topic of information accuracy, I spoke with Ellen about how she determines the accuracy of information that she finds online. Ellen explained that there are a few sites she trusts, like CNN and The New York Times. She has tried searching for information before, particularly medical information, but she has been unsatisfied in the results that were returned, mostly because she did not recognize the sources.

[kelly]

Week 5

With the moving company selected, Ellen began packing her essentials. Her younger daughter arrived home from college this week, and she and Ellen ran errands for most of the week in preparation for the move. Ellen did not mention any particular PIM challenges, but she did express concern over transferring her organization systems from one household to another. The new house is smaller than where the family is currently living, and while she was most concerned with organizing physical objects, Ellen was worried about how she was going to find things she would need when she arrived, since she was not certain she could anticipate which items would be of greatest importance. We discussed how she re-finds information that she found in the past but did not think she would need; Ellen expressed that she did not consider this a problem, because she usually remembered where she had found things, so she could simply return to the source and search again.

[kelly]

Week 7

Ellen and her family moved this week. The movers split the cargo into two trucks, and one of the trucks broke down on the way to the new house. Her biggest information challenge this week has been trying to figure out when the second truck will arrive, as the moving company has been reticent and is not regularly returning her calls. Ellen is extremely frustrated at not knowing where the rest of the household goods are located, nor when they will be delivered. This information is largely out of her control as well, since she is at the mercy of the moving company.

[kelly]

Week 8

The remaining household items finally arrived, but Ellen is still having difficulty with the moving company because of some items that they damaged, and a piece of outdoor furniture that was inadvertently left at the old house. The company is still not returning her phone calls in a timely manner.

This week, Ellen faced an information challenge when trying to register the household’s three cars with the Department of Motor Vehicles in their new state. She and George were under the impression that they would need to bring along the titles of the cars to the DMV, along with proof of their new residence, but Ellen could not locate the titles to the cars. We spoke twice this week about the issue; the first time, Ellen explained that she could not even picture the documents, and so had no idea where they could be, since they were not in the safe deposit box where she keeps all such materials. When we spoke again, she explained to me that she had discovered that the state holds the title until the cars are paid off, and so she did not actually have the titles to the cars. She also had learned that even if she did have the cars’ titles, she would not need to bring them to the DMV to re-register the cars. Ellen ultimately learned this by calling first the DMV from her previous state of residence, and then the new DMV. This is an interesting problem that expresses information fragmentation, particularly because Ellen believed she possessed information that she never had, and because it was difficult for her to determine what information she actually needed.

As Ellen and her family get settled, they are likely to continue encountering problems of personal information management. Obtaining recommendations for local businesses has already been an issue, and Ellen feels that this will be a problem moving forward as well.

[jsiess]

I just did a long-distance move, too.
Before the move I used the Internet to research vendors in my new area and even had the basement carpeted without being there. (It did help that I was moving back to my hometown and knew the reputation of the carpet people.)
I also subscribed to the local newspaper's RSS feed to find out what was going on in town. I found several other local blogs and also subscribed to their feeds.
I printed out articles I wanted to refer to later. But I also kept them on my computer by using "Read It Later" a neat Firefox add-in. (http://www.ideashower.com/ideas/launched/read-it-later/).
As for the auto titles, I keep all that kind of vital information in our safety deposit box, along with social security cards, passports, birth certificates, marriage (and divorce) papers, and a flash drive with a copy of the household inventory (including digital photos of everything). When we moved I took everything out of the box and carried it all with us in the car. We opened a box in our new bank the first week that we were there.
Another PIM hint. I have a database with the information on nearly everyone I've ever met. I enter the information in "Ask Sam" (http://www.asksam.com/), which is a free-form database that is super easy to use and costs only US$150. When you search it searches every field and does it lightning fast. So, when I want to get a phone number or email, I can enter whatever piece of information I recall (first name, where I met someone, town, etc.) and I get the record almost instantly.

I think I'm pretty well organized, but then again, I am a librarian (and daughter of an engineer)--so I come to it naturally.

Judith A. Siess, B.A., M.A., M.S.L.I.S.
INFORMATION BRIDGES INTERNATIONAL, INC. /I\B/I\
830 Sedgegrass Drive, Champaign, IL 61822-2024 USA
voice: +1-217-355-9071, fax: +1-217-355-9072, email: jsiess@ibi-opl.com,
on the web at http://www.ibi-opl.com AND NOW BLOGGING at http://opls.blogspot.com/
Publisher and Editor of The One-Person Library: A Newsletter for Librarians and Management
Out Front with Stephen Abram: A Guide for Information Leaders, ALA Editions, 2007, ISBN-13: 978-0-8389-0932-4
The New OPL Sourcebook: A Guide for Solo and Small Libraries, Information Today, Inc., 2006, ISBN 1-57387-241-5
The Essential OPL, 1998-2004: The Best of Seven Years of The One-Person Library: A Newsletter for Librarians and Management,
Scarecrow Press, 2005, ISBN 0-8108-5429-5
The Visible Librarian: Asserting Your Value With Marketing and Advocacy, ALA Editions, 2003, ISBN 0-8389-0848-9
Time Management, Planning and Prioritization for Librarians, Scarecrow Press, 2002, ISBN 0-8108-4438-9