Employing Metadata Standards in Electronic Records and Document Management a Path before Archives and Documentation and Information Centers

Archives and special documentations and information centers within government offices, companies and organizations house a collection of paper documents within themselves. The rising number of these documents and storage space limitation on one hand, and current organizational trend towards e-government on the other, had caused these documents to be increasingly converted into electronic format with concomitant change in management and preservation strategy. Electronic Document and Records Management or EDRM is one such management strategy. The most important management issues are consistency, authority, interface, description and retrieval. These issues emphasize the role of metadata given their unique capabilities in this respect. The present paper, while introducing the international standards in Electronic Record Management, would discuss the common metadata standards drafted such as e-GMS, AGLS, GILS, DC.