A NEW LEAF

Hierarchical directory systems are very useful for organizing files, but they can only help you to a certain point. If you have a collection of digital images, you may be happy with directories that reflect the content categories, such as landscapes, technology, or portraits. Subdirectories can give you more granular categories, such as family, friends, work, and so on, but if you have a large and complex collection, you still might not be able to find the image you are looking for. Search techniques based on metadata provide a better solution. Users can associate keywords with files to speed up the search. Metadata gives a user the ability to create an organizational structure that does not rely on the filesystem.