Developing metadata schemes and capturing metadata about records is essential for describing the context of records, making them meaningful, accessible, and findable.
Recordkeeping Innovation has experience working with governments on portals and information exchange sites, such as the NSW and ACT whole of government services portals. These websites describe all services and provides a taxonomy to assist users identify the services they need and navigate to service providers.
We have worked in the cultural heritage sectors to develop taxonomies for museums, galleries and archives and arts organisations to describe arts and cultural objects and activities, to facilitate searching across many institutions using standard search terms.
We have worked for a number of government archival institutions on defining recordkeeping metadata standards and schemes for the description of electronic records, and on geospatial metadata for technical systems, such as SA Water and Geoscience Australia. Metadata schemes are essential for data migration and to allow interoperability between systems.
Metadata management and scheme design involves storing contextual information about content in order to manage information assets in different stores, formats and across organisational and international boundaries. The ability to access data via the internet has changed the boundaries for where information lives and how it is identified.
Metadata began with generic information discovery schemes, such as Dublin Core and AGLS which imposed minimal metadata elements for the publication of information resources, mostly online publications over the web. As the complexity of technology increased, metadata schemes became more detailed and complex, particularly for recordkeeping systems, where the metadata includes a range of records control processes: registration, access and security, links to agents, classification, indexing and disposal.
Barbara Reed: Recordkeeping Metadata Standards, the International Context
http://archives.govt.nz/recordkeeping-metadata-standards-international-context
Barbara Reed: 'International Records Management Standards ISO 15489 and 23081' in Encyclopedia of Library and Information Sciences, Third Edition
http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~db=all~content=a917625607~frm=abslink
Archives New Zealand Technical Guide: Implementing Recordkeeping Metadata in EDRMS: Tailoring the Technical Specifications for the Electronic Recordkeeping Metadata Standard
http://continuum.archives.govt.nz/G14.html
Recordkeeping Metadata standards
ISO 23081 Information and Documentation - Records management processes - Metadata for records. ISO 23081 Parts 1 and 2, available from
http://www.iso.org/iso/iso_catalogue/catalogue_tc/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=40832
AGLS/AS 5044
http://www.agls.gov.au/
A metadata scheme is about providing enough information about record content to make the record meaningful, trustworthy and authentic
