Managing/Cataloging Files

[Jason C. Wells]

I would like to employ a system to store and maintain metadata about
computer files.  It is clear to me that plain old file system
hierarchies have serious shortcomings when you must consider long term
retrievability.  I am looking for a glorified "card catalog" system.
I've read about a bunch of content management systems in sourceforge,
but they mostly sound like web specific tools (Lenya?).  I need to
manage HTML as well as spreadsheets, a variety of text documents, and
engineering models.

The software I have in mind should manage files better than a hierarchy
and it's got to manage better than arbitrary search and index.  It
should use the filesystem that the host computer system uses (UFS,
OpenAFS).  It should make a user's life better, especially when long
term maintenance and retrievel are considered.

What are the leading open source applications for this sort of card
catalog software?  What is the geek-speak for this sort of software?

Thanks,
Jason C. Wells