Your local library is understandable to everyone from grade schoolers to graduate students. Your developers and DBAs should remember that data needs to be published, as well as cataloged and archived. They need to document the schema that make up the core of the architecture. Users should be able to understand the basics of the data architecture and policy. The more users understand about the data they are basing decisions on, the better those decisions will be.
Policy is just as important as architecture.
Everyone who creates or modifies data for other's consumption should have a clear idea of their responsibilities. Creating a data architectu re from scratch is not the place to shake up an organization. Rarely do the benefits justify going back and forcing every application to document, conform, or ship out. Start small and define your architecture and policy with smaller, meaningful projects that have a quick payoff. Concentrate on the data that is important to your users.