Hi all,
Looking for some advice from some proper records managers out there (i.e. not
me)
I'm working on delivering an EDRMS solution for a local Council using the LGCS
as a starting point. But what I can't get my head round is when to use more
files and when to use metadata. Let me give you an example.
I could have one file called Taxi-licences, and beneath it a file for each taxi
licence named after the licence number & holder name e.g. <PHV0111,O'HARA>
all documents relating to that licence can be found within that file - therefore
very easy for user to find everything they need, no need to put in much
metadata other than, say, document title and maybe date, and then the user
can search for all appropriate document within this folder quite easily.
The alternative is to have one folder called Taxi-licences and all documents
relating to all Taxi-licences go there, maybe with the following metadata e.g.
Licence Number
Car Reg Number
Customer Surname
Customer FirstName
Document title
Document Date
The user would have to fill in this metadata everytime for every document,
rather than having it imbedded within the folder. however the folder structure
is less cluttered and a search on Licence Number or Car Reg number should
bring back all the appropriate documents required.
The second option requires the biggest mental jump for a user from the
traditional shared directory on Windows, but is it necessarily better?
Surely some of you must have come across this quandary before, has anyone
any thoughts? is there a best practice solution ?
Please let me know
Thanks for your time to read this
Keith O'Hara
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