RE: [metadata] Who will consume our metadata?

This is a very good point-and highlights the importance of standards and interoperability.

BTW the metadata Dave and Phil are referring to-the purpose of which is "to direct potential readers to the best content"-is only about one type of metadata. There is a lot of other metadata that is designed for different purposes and has different audiences. That's one of the things the breakdowns in the wiki were designed to elicit comments on.

--Bill K

From: Madans, Phil [mailto:Phil.Madans@hbgusa.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 10:49 AM
To: Cramer, Dave; public-digipub-ig@w3.org
Subject: RE: [metadata] Who will consume our metadata?

I would also add that Publishers are not the only creators of metadata in the supply chain, nor do publishers have control over the metadata they produce once it has been transmitted. The metadata we provide in ONIX is regularly changed or enhanced by our trading partners. And that is not necessarily a bad thing. HBG as a commercial venture creates very commercially oriented metadata. A library distributor like B&T might change or enhance that our metadata to more suit the library market. Vendor sites like Amazon and Barnes and noble combine metadata from other sources with what we send them-like subject categories, using LOC categories for instance.  And then they map these categories to their own proprietary list of categories. Bookstores use BISAC categories but will, in the end, shelve the books where they thing it makes most sense for their customers, geographically and culturally.

The one constant is that everyone's purpose is the same, to direct potential readers to the best content. This is hard enough to do in closed communities like bookstores and online booksellers, let alone the open web.

Phil
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Phil Madans | Director, Publishing Standards and Practices | Hachette Book Group | 237 Park Avenue NY 10017 |212-364-1415 | phil.madans@hbgusa.com<mailto:david.young@hbgusa.com>

From: Cramer, Dave [mailto:Dave.Cramer@hbgusa.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 10:29 AM
To: public-digipub-ig@w3.org<mailto:public-digipub-ig@w3.org>
Subject: [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<mailto:dave.cramer@hbgusa.com>


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