[metadata] Who will consume our metadata?

For metadata to accomplish something, it needs to be both created and consumed. For us book publishers, ONIX is a good example of a very successful metadata standard. The people who make books create ONIX records that describe the books. We then send these records to the retailers, who use this information to populate their web pages. Consumers then read about the books, and (we hope) buy them. BISAC is another similar example—bookstores wanted to know which shelves to put the books on. Publishers, who presumably have read their own books and know what they are about, assigned codes to tell the bookstores what they needed to know.

Who are the consumers of all the other metadata we're talking about? Many of us publishers have already implemented some kinds of semantic data, like putting epub:type="chapter" in our ebook content. But is anyone doing anything with that information? We also want metadata to drive the discovery of our books. How would that work when most of our content is not exposed to the web (due to file formats, DRM, or the need for payment)? Who is listening, besides Google's spiders?

Dave

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Dave Cramer | Content Workflow Specialist | Hachette Book Group | 237 Park Avenue NY | NY 10017 | 917 207 7927 | dave.cramer@hbgusa.com


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