Re: [METADATA] Governance/authority (ISSUE-2)

Phil, absolutely. In fact, as the barriers to entry for publishing drop,
folks are rushing in who don¹t know ONIX from a hole in the wall and ­ most
importantly ­ don¹t care. The web allows ³anyone to say anything about
anything² but it also allows them to say it at any time and in any way. And
the standards have to be baked into the tools that permit publishing,
because the end-user is not a professional and doesn¹t want to be.

From:  "Madans, Phil" <Phil.Madans@hbgusa.com>
Date:  Tuesday, September 16, 2014 at 12:03 PM
To:  Laura Dawson <ljndawson@gmail.com>, Graham Bell <graham@editeur.org>,
Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>
Cc:  "Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken" <tsiegman@wiley.com>, Ivan Herman
<ivan@w3.org>, W3C Digital Publishing IG <public-digipub-ig@w3.org>, Bill
Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>, Madi Solomon
<Madi.Solomon@pearson.com>
Subject:  RE: [METADATA] Governance/authority (ISSUE-2)

I would agree and thank you, Laura, for articulating one of the very real
values of your traditional publishersJ
 
And so I would further Liam¹s point: ³Šmetadata is used by people who are
metadata experts but not necessarily computer experts.² Metadata is also
used by people who are neither metadata experts nor computer experts.  The
most important people: The consumers, patrons, authors, editors, etc. That¹s
who I worry about. There was a time when we wanted to market to as broad an
audience as possible, the shotgun approach,  but now we tell our editors to
be as specific as possible so they can connect with their consumers and
their  books don¹t get lost amid the hundreds of thousands of other titles
being released every year. It isn¹t a technology issue.  It is a people
issue. And now that we have educated our editors, they want to  know why
they can¹t change their metadata today and have it propagated throughout the
web immediately.
 
I think we also need to remember that ONIX was created as a B2B solution.
It was and is a way for publishers to send metadata to other members of the
supply chain, who would take that metadata and interpret it for their
consumers‹and that would very much depend on who their consumers are. For
instance, the metadata I send is changed by recipients who service the
library market because they feel my metadata is aimed at the trade consumer
(which it is) and not a library buyer. This is especially true for
children¹s books. Anyway there was always this intermediary that vetted the
metadata before it got to the consumer.  And that still goes on and is the
complexity Laura first mentioned about ingest and display control on the
part of the recipient.  And that is not necessarily a bad thing. If some
senders are sending descriptions using XHTML and some (most) are using
CDATA, or if some send author bios as other text and others as part of the
contributor composite, somebody has to resolve these differences into a
coherent display. And that includes the page count example as well.
 
What we are talking about is taking our metadata directly to the consumer
and that is a very different proposition. So we have to be very careful
about the complexity of the metadata and how it is structured. And we need
to keep in mind the audience for the metadata and what they use it for‹as
Graham said. This is more contextual than technical, I think.
 
Phil
 
 

------------------------------------------------------------
Phil Madans | Executive Director of Digital Publishing Technology | Hachette
Book Group | 237 Park Avenue NY 10017 |212-364-1415 | phil.madans@hbgusa.com
<mailto:david.young@hbgusa.com>
 

From: LAURA DAWSON [mailto:ljndawson@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 10:22 AM
To: Graham Bell; Liam R E Quin
Cc: Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken; Ivan Herman; W3C Digital Publishing IG; Bill
Kasdorf; Madi Weland Solomon
Subject: Re: [METADATA] Governance/authority (ISSUE-2)
 

And that complexity is why ONIX is almost never used properly by either
senders or receivers ­ the context almost universally is mis-matched.

 

What we¹re seeing is the increasing datafication of a business that until
quite recently resisted attempts at quantification. And we¹re seeing it
reaching down into levels that include people who have actively resisted
quantification ­ so they are confronted with begrudgingly having to do
things for reasons they don¹t always understand. We see this with
self-published authors all the time ­ they fill out metadata forms with the
least amount of information possible because the process is unpleasant ­ not
realizing that their reluctance to provide information means their book
won¹t get discovered and nobody will buy it.

 

From: Graham Bell <graham@editeur.org>

 

 


Date: Tuesday, September 16, 2014 at 7:59 AM
To: Liam R E Quin <liam@w3.org>
Cc: Laura Dawson <ljndawson@gmail.com>, "Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken"
<tsiegman@wiley.com>, Ivan Herman <ivan@w3.org>, W3C Digital Publishing IG
<public-digipub-ig@w3.org>, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>, Madi
Solomon <Madi.Solomon@pearson.com>
Subject: Re: [METADATA] Governance/authority (ISSUE-2)

 

On 16 Sep 2014, at 00:15, Liam R E Quin wrote:


> On Mon, 15 Sep 201418:11:39 -0400
>  
>> 
>> Page count is another one of those troublesome fields. :)
> 
> 
> I have my trusty copy of McKerrow on hand for bibliography and citing
> collations :-)
> 
> 
> -- 
> Liam Quin - XML Activity Lead, W3C, http://www.w3.org/People/Quin/

 

Liam

 

This is interesting in the context of a discussion about complexity -- and
though the following comes from the print book world, it maybe helps
illustrate...

 

The point about page counts (extents) that Laura hints at is that the
correct page count depends who you are. If you are in a publisher's
editorial department, then you'll remember to count the roman numbered pages
(the 'prelims'). If you are a member of the public, most likely you won't --
you'll just look at the highest numbered page. If you are in production, and
responsible for ordering the paper, then you'll count the prelims, the main
body of the book, the end matter, the blank and unnumbered pages at the end,
and you might also remember to count the unnumbered pages in a plate section
(a special insert for photographs, which is usually unnumbered because you
can't always predict at which point in the book it will be bound in). None
of these views is wrong -- the seemingly simple question 'What is the page
count?" has several correct answers, each of them contextual.

 

ONIX appears complex (no, I'll say it, it is complex) because it allows any
or all of these correct answers to be given. But it defines each answer
reasonably carefully -- so you can provide a page extent without the
prelims, with the prelims, counting or not counting the index, without the
blanks, with the blanks, with the plate section, and so on -- and the data
recipient can be sure which answer(s) you are giving. There is a controlled
vocabulary of 'extent types'. It even allows extents to be given in minutes
(for audiobooks) or in words (potentially useful for web publications and
reflowable e-books, though right now, lack of familiarity with word counts
means that non-specialists can't really judge whether an 60,000 word novel
is relatively short or relatively long).

 

Graham
 

Graham Bell

EDItEUR

 

Tel: +44 20 7503 6418

 

EDItEUR Limited is a company limited by guarantee, registered in England no
2994705. Registered Office: United House, North Road, London N7 9DP, UK.
Website: http://www.editeur.org

 

 



 
> 
> 
> 

 
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