An Exploratory Study of Metadata Creation in a Health Care Agency

Traditional paper documents, as containers of information, remain a primary source of organizational knowledge, and function as vehicles of communication. Despite the increasing use of electronic mail and other digital technologies, the entrenchment of paper documents in the fabric of work practices demands that attention be paid to how they are managed for organizational effectiveness. The workplace is likened to an information-ecology where the study of personal classification schemes can be firmly positioned within an epistemological framework. Temporal, spatial, and contextual factors influenced the creation of three levels of personal metadata along a continuum of abstraction. Loss of intellectual content may occur equally as a result of both high and low levels of abstraction. Personal metadata were also found to reflect the participant’s situational and domain specific knowledge. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website: © 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.]