It is wise to approach the metadata systems of your site with forethought.
Good digital media management is not only about storing files, it is also about enriching files with metadata.
Using suitable tools and storing just the right amount of information in your file metadata will make your life easier.
Techniques such as using a controlled vocabulary or adding your own customized metadata fields can make metadata tagging more productive and durable as your library grows. More importantly, your tagging should improve the results your users receive in searches, and improve the value of your files by making them easier to repurpose.
Involve all users in initial file tagging
Engaging users in the metadata tagging process incrementally is one way to tackle growing volumes of digital media, and Chorus is designed to make this a simple process.
By encouraging managers of site, site-level, library, and work spaces to tag files within their own spaces, the process of adding metadata to files is not only distributed, but layered: Business-critical metadata is centrally managed at a site level, and handy team-specific metadata is managed at local work space levels.
Future-proof your metadata
At Third Light, we strongly advocate the consideration of future-proof technology like mapping your Chorus metadata fields to XMP standards. This means your metadata will be available as you move between applications. For more on this, see Map metadata fields to XMP standards.
Take your time
Although adding metadata to your media will take time, it is time well-spent, and by using standards you can avoid ever re-entering this data in the future.
If you need to justify the time and money required to start a formal digital media library in your organization, it is reasonable to propose that adding metadata to a library is an investment – leading to a significant saving in the time and effort made by everyone who searches the library.
