Defining Organizational Document Metadata : A Case Beyond Standards

Despite of the vast interest on metadata research and the number of metadata standards proposed for digital documents, a dearth of research efforts on their practical application in organizations outside the public archives and information collections continues. Organizations thus lack practical means to identify, implement, and utilize the organizational metadata needed for effective document management in the enterprise. We report a case in which document metadata in an engineering company with 2600 employees were defined after a major merger. At the outset, a review on 19 metadata standards created a baseline for the definition. The subsequent effort resulted in an organizational metadata definition that included 48 metadata elements, which did not straightforwardly correspond to any standard reviewed. The study can also be considered as a blueprint for a method of defining organizational metadata for digital documents.