With a great demand of metadata requirements from thematic projects, how to offer an approach to attaining efficiency and high quality becomes an urgent task for Metadata Architecture and Application Team (MAAT). Therefore, MAAT developed a “Metadata Lifecycle Model”, which is based on the real requirements of the National Digital Archives Project and applying the system analysis of computing science and the content analysis of social science. The “Metadata Lifecycle Model” is employed to develop a set of systematic working procedures to fulfill functions, including quality assurance, quality consistency, and project management.

• Requirement Assessment & Content Analysis: Acquisition of Metadata Base Needs; Review of Relevant Metadata Standards and Projects; Investigation of Deep Metadata Needs; Identification of Strategies for the Metadata Schemes and Achieving Interoperability with Well-known Metadata Standards.
• System Requirement Specification: Preparation of the Metadata Requirement Specification; Evaluation of Metadata Systems.
• Metadata System: Preparation of Best Practice Guidance; Development of the Metadata System.
• Service and Evaluation: Maintenance of Metadata Service; Evaluation of Metadata Performance.
  

In terms of acquisition of requirement information for the analysis, MAAT developed “Getting Started With Metadata” as a bridge between thematic projects and MATT, to guide content experts to express metadata requirements in a structured way. The “Getting Started With Metadata” is composed of two parts: Blank Template and Guiding Instruction and Example.