RE: [metadata] Who will consume our metadata?

+1. And note that the metadata Tzviya is talking about at a very granular level is needed not just for "selling" chunks of content but _managing_ chunks of content. This is especially important for publishers who are moving toward "publishing to the repository," where they think of the repository of content first, and the products produced out of that repository increasingly as derived from that repository rather than as just being the source of the content in the repository. Doing so makes you think about your content development in a fundamentally different (and more powerful) way. This is perhaps most evident and increasingly prevalent in the educational space (and also technical documentation a la DITA). --Bill K

-----Original Message-----
From: Siegman, Tzviya - Hoboken [mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 11:38 AM
To: Ivan Herman; Dave Cramer
Cc: W3C Digital Publishing IG
Subject: RE: [metadata] Who will consume our metadata?

I optimistically agree with Ivan. 

Right now, granular metadata is not really standardized. Our chunks are getting smaller. We are aware of the issues with sub-publication level authors/contributors and titles (articles within publications). In textbook publishing, the chunks are smaller. People talk about "assets" not even chapters. We need a method to record creator, rights-holder, key terms, caption, abstract, subject etc. for one photo, a quiz, a section of content, and so on. If we are selling chunks of content instead of books or even chapters, our metadata might need some sharpening. 

****************************
Tzviya Siegman * Senior Content Technology Specialist * Wiley Content Management * John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
111 River Street, MS 5-02 * Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774 * 201-748-6884 * tsiegman@wiley.com

-----Original Message-----
From: Ivan Herman [mailto:ivan@w3.org] 
Sent: Tuesday, February 04, 2014 11:27 AM
To: Dave Cramer
Cc: W3C Digital Publishing IG
Subject: 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

> 
> Dave
> 
> :: :: ::
> 
> 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 
Digital Publishing Activity Lead
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Received on Tuesday, 4 February 2014 16:56:01 UTC