Organize Your Results

After you have completed your Survey, and even before you contact the barn owners and obtain information from them, you will have quite a bit of data on your hands. The data are useful:

• to write a report on the Historic Barns of your town;
• to rank your barns in order of repairs needed;
• to calculate statistics;
• to apply for grants.

The survey data are only the beginning. You will be adding information –- from the barn owner, from the Assessments as they are done, and from contractors and owners as they report on repairs and maintenance.

The SVB project strongly recommends that you organize your data and that you keep three records:

1. A folder for each barn that contains the data collected on the various forms (Survey, Owner’s Information, and Assessments) and photos. It can be a manila folder or book holding the completed forms, printed photos, and other collected material.

OR

It can be a computer document -- most usually in a word processing program such as Microsoft Word -- with a folder containing the Barn Survey file, Owner’s Information file, Assessments file, photos file, and files for other scanned material such as maps or old photos. All correspondence related to that barn, expert evaluations done, grant requests, repair contracts, etc., can be kept in the folder. The folder can be shared with the owner, or with the granting agency. Back-up copies of the date are easily stored.

2. A spreadsheet covering all barns. The Survey and Assessment data collected on each historic barn in your town can be entered on the Project Spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel) on this site. The spreadsheet has a separate space, or cell, in which to enter the data for each item on the Survey and Assessment forms. The order in which data are entered on the spreadsheet is the same as the order on the Survey and Assessment forms.

The spreadsheet is designed to hold information on the location, structure and condition of every historic barn in Vermont.

NOTE: Windows Vista and other Internet Explorer users and others may find that Internet Explorer blocks this file. Check your security settings if you experience difficulties.

3. A file for each barn owner. The creation of a Barn Owner File is discussed in Contact Owner. The file can be paper or a spreadsheet. Your data can be entered on the Owner Spreadsheet (Microsoft Excel) on this site.

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