Now that I’ve been back to work the panic has set in! I’ve got information literacy classes to teach, students to meet with, meetings and more meetings! To make things just a bit more complicated I’ve got numerous emails I allowed to pile up while on a 3-week hiatus! I wonder sometimes how other librarians organize their work!
Be it resolved that I will get organized at work AND maintain this organization throughout the year.
This is my first New Year’s resolution for 2008. Starting with….. my email.
I will organize my email messages using message filters in Thunderbird to automatically move incoming messages (from the INBOX) to specific designated folders. . Here’s how:
1. First identify listservs, committees, people who frequently email you (e.g. secretary, acquisitions personnel etc.), frequent email notifications (eg. wiki changes, journal issues alerts, electronic slips for acquisitions etc.), agendas/meetings notes for committees/groups, or emails that you get regularly that might have the same subject (e.g. schedules).
2. Identify or create folders for these messages to be automatically placed. Try using sub-folders (e.g. “ListServ“, “Winter 2008“, “Tools“, “Professional Development” for the folder “Information Literacy“)
3. Note email address (e.g for alerts, listservs) or texts used in subject line or body of message. In Thunderbird go to Tools and click on Message Filters. Click on New to create a new filter.
4. Name your filter (e.g. Information Literacy Listserv). Type in the email address (e.g. ili-l@ala.org) or words in the subject line (e.g. ili) or content of the email that you want the filter to match.
5. Under “Perform these actions” select the folder/sub-folder that you want the message to be moved to (e.g. Information Literacy/Listserv) and click on OK.
6. Once you have created a number of filters you can arrange the order that you’ll like the filter applied. The filter will only apply to one message. So if you have an email that has “information literacy” in the body and you’ve set up 2 filters that flag messages with “information literacy” the email message will only be moved to the first filter listed in your list of filters. So choose your filter criteria very carefully!
7. After you set up your filters click on “Run Now” to apply the filter to messages already in your INBOX. Once the filters are set new messages will automatically be filtered.
Note that message filters only work on the computer that you set it up on. When I check my email from home via a web-based system the message filters don’t apply to new messages. When I return to work though I manually run the message filter to move the desired messages automatically!
This will help me save a lot of time. Once alerts and messages from listservs are moved to the appropriate folder my Inbox will (hopefully) only contain more important messages. The best part is that I’m aware of which folders have new messages because the folder colour changes to blue and it is bold. For more information go here.
