Re: [metadata] Who will consume our metadata?

On 04 Feb 2014, at 16:28 , Cramer, Dave <Dave.Cramer@hbgusa.com> wrote:

> 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?

What I would *imagine* (I emphasize the word 'imagine' because I am looking at this from another aspect, obviously) is that if the metadata was available on the Web in an open format (and regardless of the DRM on the original) then the metadata could/would be discoverable. If the metadata produced by publishers was linked/merged with other cataloguing data (say, in libraries) then different engines (yes, Google is an obvious candidate) would discover it.

I may be utterly naïve about all that. But I always regarded metadata (on books, but also on, say, data published on the Web in, say, CSV format) as some sort of a glue that bound the content to the outside world.

Is this very far from reality? 

Ivan

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> Dave
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> :: :: ::
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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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Ivan Herman, W3C 
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