Need sources for document naming/storage conventions

[rica -dot- handke -at- sickkids -dot- ca]

I'm de-lurking after several months of fascinated reading and learning
to ask a question. (I've checked the TECHWR-L archives, and done a
variety of Internet searches, but so far without much luck.)

I'm currently on contract at a hospital. The department I'm helping out
in (doing a little bit of everything: editing reports, designing forms,
and creating a couple of small productivity-enhancers using VBA in
Office 2000) has recently realized that its knowledge management and/or
document management has been poor to nonexistent. In an attempt to
remedy the situation, they've embarked rather precipitously (read:
without adequate planning or understanding of the implications of what
they're doing) on a project that they think will remedy the situation.
To wit: they're going to centralize all departmental documents (which
are currently scattered on about a dozen local hard drives) onto one big
server--or maybe it's just a drive--that will live on the hospital's
already-established network.

They now seem to have realized that if they just dump the contents of
everybody's hard drive onto the new system, they're going to have a
massive problem. We need to develop a document-naming convention, as
well as some convention for naming the folders and subfolders (a.k.a.
directories and subdirectories), and *fast*! And somehow the task of
researching the best way to go about designing one has fallen to me.
(OK, I sort of volunteered--but only because it looked as though
otherwise it would become the bailiwick of the World's Worst Change
Manager [the guy who's been "championing" the whole project], a prospect
I find too painful to contemplate.)

This place has no central Administration Department I can call on for
help. IT seems supremely uninterested. The Health Records folks here do
have a system, but they invented it themselves. The Ministry of Health
is currently in the process of designing its own system, and while
they're happy to share what they've come up with so far, they haven't
actually come up with much, as far as I can tell.

Anyone know of any Internet (ideally) or print resources I can use for
guidance? Alternatively, anyone care to outline their own organization's
system as a model? (I hear the Canadian Department of National Defence
has a great one, and I've put in a call to a former client there in
hopes that their classification system isn't, er,  classified Top
Secret.) If so, e-mail me privately and I'll cheerfully summarize for
the list.

Many thanks for any suggestions you can offer.

Riça Night
(incognito here as Rica Handke,
which is still her legal name)
rica -dot- handke -at- sickkids -dot- ca


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