Building a Better Book in the Browser (Using Semantic Web technologies and HTML5)

This article [1] was shared with me recently.

Abstract: The library as place and service continues to be shaped by the legacy of the book. The book itself has evolved in recent years, with various technologies vying to become the next dominant book form. In this article, we discuss the design and development of our prototype software from Montana State University (MSU) Library for presenting books inside of web browsers. The article outlines the contextual background and technological potential for publishing traditional book content through the web using open standards. Our prototype demonstrates the application of HTML5, structured data with RDFa and Schema.org markup, linked data components using JSON-LD, and an API-driven data model. We examine how this open web model impacts discovery, reading analytics, eBook production, and machine-readability for libraries considering how to unite software development and publishing.


[1] http://journal.code4lib.org/articles/10668

Tzviya Siegman
Digital Book Standards & Capabilities Lead
Wiley
201-748-6884
tsiegman@wiley.com<mailto:tsiegman@wiley.com>