In recent years I have come to use some pretty fantastic online library systems. This brought to thinking about the extremely complex science of indexing libraries of information. If you have had the chance to use an online library system for research purposes, it is truly amazing how much useful information you can find that does not exist in Google or any other search engine for that matter.
Some reasons for this are in a library setting is staff make decisions about what they are going to index and need to be able to find and loan a book out at at any given time.
Why document organization is important
For our own work in organizations, we have the same problem but perhaps don’t have have the discipline of the librarians to organize and control this information. One place to start to make this easier is to determine some logic to the organization and naming conventions of documents. Here are some guidelines:
- Determine the types of documents which will be included in the collection. e.g. Process Documentation, Standard Operating Procedures, Engineering Release Documents, Product documents … you get the idea.
- If possible create an index of where these documents reside along with a description (metadata) about the relationships and why this important to understand.
- Add details of authors and release for users to quickly find more information when needed.
- If you have the opportunity to restructure the location of the data store, take advantage of the opportunity to create logical folders storing information in an easy to find location.
