How to Tag...If You Decide to Tag

As noted the other day, it may not be worth it in every situation for a company to make scanned PDFs searchable by everyone in the company.

However, in many cases, it is worth it--especially if the project is well-thought out, as part of a larger Enterprise Content Management initiative.

One key aspect of creating such successful intiative, as opposed to an initiative that costs a lot of money and doesn't accomplish much, is the correct use of "metadata." For that reason, check out James Robertson's work on this topic.

It's located here, and it's very instructive.

Mr. Robertson writes:

"There are two fundamental purposes for metadata on intranets and websites:
1) helping end users find what they are looking for, via search or navigation
2) helping authors and administrators manage the site."

In the situation of a corporation deciding if--and how--to make imaged documents searchable, metadata might be defined as the thing that makes search results page worthwhile, instead of worthless.

For example, a lawyer's paperwork might be "tagged" with "metadata" including the name of the client, the date of the case, and the date the document was imaged. These bits of metadata would then ideally make searches for those documents more accurate and precise.

If you hire a document imaging services company, they will do a lot of the metadata work for you. But you should understand the concept regardless, because it's important.

We'll blog more on this topic in future posts, and again, Mr. Roberton's Web site is much recommended.