Document Imaging: With and Without Metadata Tagging

Over the past few weeks, I've talked about how metadata is the “data about our data and/or data containers” and tagging that data is critical for the proper document imaging and archival of our intellectual properties. Without dynamic or “smart” data tags, our document images are available online in their repository, but accessing those documents, or the specific information contained within those document images still presents a huge challenge.

Below I've put together a short commentary on the history of the DDC for the purpose of exploring the accessibility benefits of document imaging with, and without metadata tagging, as seen below:



A Brief History of the Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC)

The Dewey Decimal Classification System (DDC) marked the beginning of the modern library movement in the nineteenth century. The man responsible for its creation was Melville Louis Kossuth Dewey, known to most today as, Melvil Dewey. Melvil Dewey created the DDC in 1873, and had it published and patented in 1876. The DDC system grew from its first edition in 1876, and has been translated into over 30 languages to date, including: Arabic, Chinese, French, Greek, Hebrew, Icelandic, Italian, Korean, Norwegian, Russian, and Spanish. Over the last 135-years, the Dewey Decimal System has been embraced for metadata standards in over 200,000 libraries, in 135 countries, for the proper classification, aggregation, identification and location of specific books and sundries, all over the world.

Document Image (only): Users who want to access this document online have to know the exact title of the scanned image (The History of the Dewey Decimal Classification System), or select the title, author and/or creation date from an index list of all scanned document titles in order to access it. Users also have to have proper access to the proprietary LAC-Group repository where this document is stored.

Document Image with “smart” metadata tags: By adding metadata tags to key-words (all highlighted in  blue font) including: document title, document author, date created, intellectual property of, and all of the important facts about the topic, this image is converted to a 3-dimensional dynamic data set.  Users can now query the LAC-Group database, or use an Internet browser to access this data in the Digital Marketplace by simply typing in any one of the following words, or query phrases:

-    History of Dewey Decimal System

-    History of DDC

-    White Papers on DDC by Rob Corrao

-    DDC by LAC-Group

-    Melvil Dewey

-    DDC creation date

-    DDC publication date

-    DDC patent date

-    DDC languages

-    No. of libraries using DDC

-    No of countries using DDC

-    Documents created on 1/24/12

In addition, if dynamic hypertext links are included for each of the above key-words, the user not only accesses this scanned image, but potentially dozens more that have metadata tags and links to this subject matter. Metadata tags also provide users with quick access to specific facts within the scanned images like: DDC creator - Melvil Dewey, 1873 creation date, 1876 publication and patent dates, and DDC in Korean, Arabic or Hebrew even, saving immeasurable time in research.

Join me next week as I delve into some of the specific benefits of proper document imaging with metadata tags within specific industries.

"A library's function is to give the public in the quickest and cheapest way information, inspiration, and recreation. If a better way than the book can be found, we should use it." – Melvil Dewey (1851-1931), American Librarian and Educator.

What is Metadata Tagging?

Tagging your metadata (“data about your data and/or data containers”) is the key to proper classification of your assets in your archival system, in order to provide your employees, clients and prospects proper online identification and access to those assets. Metadata tags are typically words, images, terms and other identification markers that transform a simple image into a dynamic document. When we examine the benefits of metadata tagging in our personal lives, it’s easier for us to grasp the need, and the enormous benefits for metadata tagging our document images and digital assets within our businesses.

Metadata tagging is already part of our every day lives, helping us all find what we need quickly in the virtual marketplace. Some great examples of how metadata tags save us time and money are easily found in the online applications many of us now use every day, whether Google searches, or in the social and professional networks, Facebook and LinkedIn, YouTube, and Twitter (to name a few). All of these applications include metadata tags for our names, the companies we work for, our network of peers and friends, and our bibliographic information, our authorship of quotes, blogs, articles, books, photography, videos and art. These tags are commonly in the form of dynamic hypertext or web links, Internet book-marks and key-word tags. (Metadata tags, in the form of dynamic links, embedded above for your convenience, allowing us to access all five of these applications easily from this one document.) Metadata tags also enable us to type in a key-word or name into Google or other Internet search engines, and within seconds have an index listing and links to access 100s of documents and sites on that specific subject or person.  Metadata tags have literally changed our research time from days, weeks, perhaps months, to a rapid method for exploring documents and records, within a matter of seconds.

While libraries were already well positioned to convert their assets from the Dewey Decimal System to this dynamic digital environment early on, academic institutions, government agencies, and law firms weren’t far behind them. Today, it’s difficult to find any industry or specific business that hasn’t or won’t benefit from digitization and metadata tagging. Next week, join me as I explore specific examples of document imaging versus dynamic imaging with metadata tagging.

“I basically did all the library research for this book on Google, and it not only saved me enormous amounts of time but actually gave me a much richer offering of research in a shorter time.” – Thomas Friedman

What is Metadata?

Metadata has been a business term closely associated with cataloging archived information dating back to 1876, starting with the creation of the standard proprietary library classification system, the Dewey Decimal System.  Remember the old 3x5 card catalog system in your school or community library? Those 3x5 cards contained the book title, author, subject and a short synopsis, and an alphanumeric identification number that provided readers with the section and shelf in the library where the physical book was located. The information displayed on those 3x5 cards is the metadata for the library’s assets. Over the last 135-years, the Dewey Decimal System has been embraced for metadata standards in over 200,000 libraries, in 135 countries, for the proper classification, aggregation, identification and location of specific books and sundries, all over the world. Today, metadata is not only a common term for library assets management, but it’s a term we hear in almost every industry as businesses expand their presence and assets into the virtual marketplace. Specifically, metadata refers to “data about the data”, as well as “data about the containers of data”, also known as the structural metadata.

Most often metadata is an information set that includes:

1. means of creation of the data
2. purpose of the data
3. author of the data
4. date and time of data creation
5. placement of the data on a computer network
6. the standards used or followed

Join me during the next several weeks, as I cover specific industry examples of metadata, metadata tagging, and the differences between document and image metadata, indexing and cataloging to optimize your asset archival and retrieval.  Ways in which organizations are using enhanced metadata to increase sales.  Please respond here, or contact me directly if you would like me to highlight examples and benefits to your specific industry. 

"Books constitute capital. A library book lasts as long as a house: for hundreds of years. It is not, then, an article of mere consumption but fairly of capital, and often in the case of professional men, setting out in life, it is their only capital." – Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826), 3^rd President of the United States.

Pros of Outsourcing and Hiring Information Professionals (Part 4 of 4)

LAC Group was founded 25 years ago as Library Associates, to meet the growing demand for outsourced librarians, for physical asset organization and research, in businesses of all industries. Like you, we too had to evolve to meet the changing needs of our clients (hence the name change), and their clients. As technology launched us all into the Digital Age, we responded in kind with an extensive investment in technology and training for our team of librarians, and support for the information management staff of our 1,000+ clients. Today, we have almost 400 information professionals employed worldwide, with varying skill sets, that work in the information management field directly for our clients from inside their organizations. This trend for outsourcing or contracting information management professionals continues to be well received in almost every industry, considering many business owners are still getting their heads around the technology, and the demand by their users for multimedia access to all data in real-time. From a business application perspective, these professional physical and digital asset managers are your information gurus; they are responsible for finding, using, managing and sharing your information, both internally and externally.

Outsourcing some or all information management functions is not only viable, because it alleviates the time, money and resources necessary for hiring and training staff on an entirely new position, with an entirely new skillset, but it also eliminates the additional ongoing operational costs associated with an additional employee including: payroll taxes, health care, general liability and workman’s compensation, to name a few.   Additionally it allows your business to focus on its core business.  Many have the misconception that outsourcing means a reduction in staff or wages – while there are some companies in the industry that have perpetuated this perception, this is not always the case. Hiring an outsourced information professional (in-house) may be not only the most cost effective option for you if you, but a boost to the employee. Further, it allows your organization to develop a strategy for your business for the long run.  Regardless whether or not your information professional is an employee or contracted from a company like LAC Group, the role they play in your organization is significant, and will increase in value over time. We have only begun to scratch the surface of savings ahead for us all, through this environmentally favorable demand for digitization in all commerce across the globe.

Recently, Information Today published an article: Revitalising Outsourcing, thepros and cons of outsourcing for information professional, authored by Iain Dunbar (Oct. 20, 2011), who is LAC Group's GM of UK Operations.  

“With the enormous and steady increase in the volume of our literature, we must rely more and more upon sympathetic selection, judicious editing, and the indexer who knows where to exercise discretion. Any simpleton can write a book, but it requires high skill to make an index.” - Rossiter Johnson

Skill Sets of Information Professionals (Part 3 of 4)

Whether named Information Professionals, Digital Asset Managers, Virtual Librarians or something else, these essential people possess a special skill-set necessary to organize and manage your intellectual properties, especially important as you implement digital access to your data via the web to your employees, clients and prospects. Candidates with strong IT backgrounds only, often lack the depth of knowledge required to understand how your assets are used from a business application perspective. And, traditional librarians most often lack the technical expertise needed to properly copyright, catalog, meta-tag and organize assets in digital format for online access. Information professionals today must have both technical expertise, and strong organizational proficiency. Finding, hiring and training, or contracting the right Information Manager (Digital Asset Manager, Librarian, Information Professional) is critical to the successful implementation of a digital or digital and hard-copy combined library.

In addition to experience in cataloging, indexing, meta-tagging, digital file formats, and strong organizational and research skills, many information professionals now also possess certifications in Knowledge Management, Copyright Management, Digital Rights Management, Business and Competitive Intelligence. They have a strong working knowledge of information technology and office applications, including: content aggregation tools, SharePoint and other tools including: Factiva, LexisNexis, Bloomberg, Factset, Thomson ONE Analytics, and FinancialTimes.com, to name a few.  Information Managers posses the technical skills necessary to function as the system administrator of your library, providing different users with different access levels to your assets.

In Part-4 of this series, I will speak directly to LAC-Group’s expertise and 25-years experience in library services, as we employee nearly 400 information professionals, all of which are working from client sites all over the world today.

“He is wise who knows the sources of knowledge -where it is written and where it is to be found.”- A.A. Hodge

Hiring/Contracting Options for Digital Asset Management (Part 2 of 4)

Although a Digital Asset Manager is a relatively new position, it has quickly become a necessity in almost every industry. With over 20,000 asset managers working throughout the world (in almost every industry) today, and those numbers projected to triple within the next decade, the good news for executives and IT professionals is that you now have many more options available to you, than you did even five years ago. Whether you work in corporate America, the private business sector, government, law, or bio/pharma, a good portion of your business is now conducted in the virtual marketplace, and that volume is only expected to increase as time passes. Therefore, adding the right Digital Asset Manager to your organization is critical to your future success. In many cases using an outside firm to manage your digital assets can result in not only savings but productivity gains.  Hiring and contracting options for the digitization and management of your assets includes:

1. Outsourcing the recovery of archives, assets lost in a crisis, including storage repository recovery and expansion.
2. Outsourcing the digitization and organization of specific assets for a specific project.
3. Outsourcing the cataloging, meta-tagging, and organization of your digital and physical assets, followed by training of your internal information management staff for the ongoing administration of your library from in-house.
4. Outsourcing the digitization of your assets, and retaining a contracted digital asset managers as part of your IT team for the on-going administration of your asset library.
5. Adding an experienced digital asset manager to compliment your in-house employees for the digitization and/or permanent administration of your library.

In Part-3 of this series, I will cover the specific skill sets for librarians in the Digital Age.

“Libraries are not made; they grow.” - Augustine Birrell

Commonly Outsourced Information Management Functions (Part 1 of 4)

First and foremost, outsourcing information management (IM) doesn’t have to be all or nothing; Outsourcing of some library and information management services is already an accepted and common practice in every library today in the public sector, as well as most in-house, legal and government repositories. Most executives and IT managers now approach outsourcing from the perspective of a long-term strategic business practice to reduce costs, and increase workflow efficiencies and enhanced services for their customers and employees. Outsourcing IT functions is an invaluable option available within the library services industry, allowing businesses to not only jump over new technological hurdles much faster, and at a reduced cost, but to better control the massive cultural change within their organization when transitioning from a traditional to digital library. One of the biggest challenges is deciding which business functions to contract out, and which to maintain in-house. According to 2011 benchmarks by Outsell, the most commonly outsourced activities fall into the following four categories:

1. Transactional Activities: Document imaging, cataloging and delivery, and data inquiries and alerting services that are necessary IM functions, but don’t necessarily increase revenues.
2. Tactical Enterprise Information Management Functions: Complex queries and research, and archive and records management that require understanding from a business and technology perspective.
3. Outside Expertise Required: Expertise is often not available in existing IM staff for information analysis, and management of enterprise information architecture.
4. User training: Information and technology providers commonly handle in-house user training.    

These four categories of outsourced IM functions are all common responsibilities associated with both Physical and Digital Asset Managers, whether an employee or contractor. So in Part-2 of this series, I will outline the hiring and contracting options available to you so you can properly plan and expand your business into the digital marketplace.  

Blog 1 of 4 Reference:

OUTSELL, Making Information Management Outsourcing Work: Success Factors and Best Practices, by Roger Strouse (Jan 17, 2011)

“To know where you can find anything, that in short, is the largest part of learning.” - Anonymous