Once metadata has been published, documents in the ArcIMS Metadata Service can be managed in the same manner that you manage other ArcGIS items. While the steps for managing published metadata documents are the same as for other items in the Catalog window, there are a few differences in how the Metadata Service manages those documents that are useful to know:
- Renaming—When metadata is published, the title within the metadata is used as the name of the document. You can rename a published metadata document in the Catalog window, but doing so doesn't change the title stored within the metadata.
- Editing—Although it is possible to directly edit the published document using the ArcGIS metadata editor, those changes are only made in the Metadata Service. The original document won't be updated. If you later republish the original document, your changes will be lost. It is not recommended to edit documents directly in the Metadata Service.
- Deleting—When you delete a published metadata document, you are only deleting the selected reference to that document. All references to a document must be deleted to remove that document from the service. When you delete the last reference to a document, a message appears confirming that you want to remove the document from the Metadata Service.
- Creating folders—Folders can be used to organize documents in a way that makes it easy to browse, rather than search, for GIS resources.
- Copying—When you copy a published metadata document, a reference to the original document is placed in the destination. Only one copy of the document is stored in the metadata service's database, and the document only appears once in a list of search results. When a document is updated, the changes are automatically reflected for all references to that document; each copy doesn't have to be updated separately.
You can see all properties of your published documents in Details view in the Contents tab in ArcCatalog.
Tasks for managing these properties are unique to ArcIMS Metadata Services:
Making a document public or private—Public documents are available to everyone. Private documents are only available to a workgroup of people who access the Metadata Service with an appropriate username. Details view shows whether your documents are public or private.
The Metadata Service has a setting in its configuration file that determines if all documents published are initially public or private. You can change a document's privacy setting after it is published.
Creating relationships between documents—Relationships establish links between related documents similar to links between related topics in a Help system. With relationships, finding metadata for one resource with a search can lead you to other related resources in which you might also be interested. For example, you might establish a relationship between metadata for a map and aerial photographs covering the same area.
When you look at a document in Metadata Explorer, links to documents that describe related resource are provided.
Changing a document's owner—Changing the owner of a document means someone else will have permission to maintain its content, republish it, and delete it, and the original owner will not. The Metadata Service's administrator must transfer ownership if a new person takes responsibility for a set of metadata documents. Otherwise, the new person will be unable to manage the documents or republish them after making local updates to the metadata.
For the documents you can access, Details view shows if you own those documents. The service administrator can see the name of the user who owns each document.
Published metadata documents that describe an ArcIMS Image or Feature Service have a different icon 
. For these documents, Details view shows the ArcIMS server, service name, and service type recorded in the Metadata Service for each document. You can preview the service described in the Preview tab.
If any document properties that you see in Details view are incorrect, update the metadata to contain the correct information in the appropriate metadata element and republish the document.
Browse folders and the metadata librarian
A Metadata Service is only useful if the published documents are easy to find. Creating a useful catalog of documents requires the services of a librarian who can manage the documents and work with contributors to ensure their quality. Like building an index for a book, the librarian needs to think about the various ways people will look for resources.
The librarian can use the Catalog window to construct a series of folders that organizes the published ArcIMS metadata documents in different ways. One document could appear in a different place in each hierarchy. One folder might organize documents by geographic location, another folder might organize documents by publisher, another by subject, and so on. When browsing the contents of the service, people can use each of those folders as a different entry point to drill down through the available resources and find what they need.
The librarian must be granted permission to administer the service by the ArcIMS administrator.