Library Administration Best Practices

The following is a list of considerations for library administrators when configuring the FileHold library and controlled metadata vocabulary.

1. Understand your documents and users. We recommend that you obtain relevant samples of all documents, templates and records that your organization wishes to store in the repository. Take careful note of the documents and talk to the users that are working with these documents on a daily basis.
• What is the size of your legacy repository in terms of numbers of documents? Are you going to only import the most recent version of legacy documents or all versions.
• Do they have cover sheets, common styles and naming conventions?
• Is it easy to understand the documents intent and contents at a glance?
• Do some documents change more often than others?
• Should some documents be treated as records? Records typically never change and are stored as a snapshot in time of a particular transaction or event. (Marriage Certificate, Land Title Document, Birth Certificate, X-Ray Image, etc)
• What is the best kind of information or data can be used to classify a document by its type. For example, if the document is of type Purchase order, the purchase order number and purchase order date may be the best data that can be used to distinguish one PO from another.
• What kind of information would users want to search for documents by? What kind of key information do groups of users rally around. For example, does everyone in engineering talk using part number code while users in accounting frequently make referenced to customer ID or invoice number. This sort of information can quickly form the foundation of what metadata should be associated with documents.
• Divide the documents into logical groups based on who is to access the documents and the common metadata that documents have.
• Are documents being added to FileHold from 3rd party systems? Do these systems have the ability to export the documents along with metadata for the documents?
• Do you have a collection of documents to be scanned before bringing them into FileHold? Have you purchased document imaging and scanning systems? Are scan stations configured and running?
• Which groups of users should be able to access which types of documents? Which groups of users should NOT be able to access which types of documents?


2. Set document
r etention and disposal policies
• How long does each type of document have to be retained by the company before it is first archived then disposed of.
• Is your company public? If so, depending on where you are in the world you may be subject to Sarbanes-Oxley or other regulatory requirements that mandate various behaviors and accounting practices as well as strict policies towards information management and record and document retention.
  
  
3. Plan your controlled metadata vocabulary. FileHold consultants often plan out customer’s hierarchies with Microsoft Excel –it is an excellent way to think things through. Color code sensitive areas or read only folders. Here is an example.
   
   
   
   
4. Configure document schemas and metadata fields and build a categorization system that works.
   • Keep the FileHold document schemas simple: A simple schema would contain a single drop down menu to further categorize the type of document and a comments field to allow for user’s comments about that document version .
   • You can make them complex to provide for the management of a legal contract and its complete lifecycle. It is recommended to keep the number of metadata fields to a maximum of 5 per schema.
   • Determine the key metadata fields common to all schemas and that would act as a powerful search and add these to the appropriate schemas. For example, searching using the customer name metadata fields across Purchase Order, Invoice and Contract document types.
   • Its easy to say “I don’t need this” or “my users don’t have time for this” – however; its easy to make a system that takes just a few seconds for the users to categorize which greatly speeds up the process in the future of finding or updating the document. Pay a small price now or pay more later is a saying that comes to mind here.
   • Keep it simple: When rolling out a system it is important to make the schemas easy to use and stick to a few key fields. Use required fields sparingly. In an aerospace, financial, medical, healthcare or legal environment required fields may be mandatory and will be used heavily because the data about the document is key.
     
     
5. Stage the library rollout : Take it one step at a time.
   • Be realistic. Start with one group or document collection at a time to avoid being overwhelmed. Work with the people who have the most pain with document management first, make that implementation a success then move on.
   • Make sure you allot enough time for document scanning, classification and migration.
   • Make sure you allot enough time for system training.

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