Abstract: Systems and methods for structuring metadata associated with digital media content such as images and videos are disclosed. Use of an existing hierarchical taxonomy provides a set of structured metadata to organize unstructured data stored in an electronic media archive. As digital media content is submitted to the archive, metadata keywords are user-selected from the existing taxonomy to identify and describe the digital media content, and to position the content within the hierarchical structure. The selected metadata keywords can then be automatically associated with synonyms and related terms to build an ontological network that facilitates efficient retrieval of the content when searching the electronic media archive. Each node in the taxonomy is then linked to its foreign language counterparts, allowing the content to be located in an international search.