Designing elegant metadata

Abstract

The advancement of digital asset management technologies, the need for integrated content systems and the huge proliferation of digital assets require equal advancements in the design and use of metadata to manage those assets. Alongside this, the importance of metadata within businesses is now being recognised as equal to content. To leverage their metadata, organisations must ensure the data are well organised, well managed, adopted and owned. Finding the perfect middle ground between simple systems and basic tags, through to complex multifunctional and multidimensional metadata management is challenging. The many difficulties can result in metadata being neglected and end users becoming disengaged. Creating elegant metadata means designing solutions that balance complex needs in a simple yet powerful way, thus making them more effective. This paper will discuss the ways in which metadata can be made elegant, and in turn become a valuable tool for users and business. To support the adoption and use of metadata, the paper also discusses how to avoid common pitfalls associated with the creation of metadata.