Purposeful data: the roles and purposes of recordkeeping metadata

Optimising metadata implementation can significantly improve records management practice. This article aims to identify a number of important issues that should be considered in any implementation of recordkeeping metadata in order to optimise that implementation.

The research presented was part of a doctoral thesis “Purposeful data: the roles and purposes of recordkeeping metadata” which itself was part of a collaborative research project seeking to comprehensively specify and codify recordkeeping metadata. The purposes were identified via a research method known as warrant analysis.

Literary warrant identified that metadata fulfil seven different purposes: identifying all entities at all levels of aggregation; establishing connections between related entities; sustaining record structure, content and accessibility through time; administering record‐keeping business; documenting the history of recordkeeping events; facilitating discovery, understanding, retrieval and delivery; and documenting metadata attribution.

Recordkeeping systems should be designed with full awareness of the capacities of metadata and following a full assessment of the organisational needs that should be met by the system. Through better system design and well‐considered metadata implementation, records management operations in any environment can be significantly improved.

The paper establishes key roles of metadata and the importance of system design metadata implementation based on doctoral research.