There seems to be no standard way to get or set the buffer-global keyword properties in Org files. For example, reading or changing this information is difficult:
#+TITLE: org-global-props
#+AUTHOR: Nathanael Gentry
The Kitchin group has an excellent solution, of course, and I have extended the regex-based solution for property setting and validation.
Tobias's Org-fu is nice but certainly not as fast as the Kitchin solution.