RE: As an aside, a possibly interesting read....

+1 This is a GREAT concise summary of the ISBN and ISTC issues.

-----Original Message-----
From: LAURA DAWSON [mailto:ljndawson@gmail.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, September 23, 2014 11:40 AM
To: Ivan Herman; W3C Public Digital Publishing IG Mailing List
Subject: Re: As an aside, a possibly interesting read....

I work for the US ISBN Agency and used to chair the BISG Identification Committee (I still serve on it, but had to step down as chair once I started with Bowker, because I didnıt want the appearance of conflict of interest), and I can attest that the identification problem is related to several factors:

1. Mis-application of ISBNs - publishers not assigning separate ISBNs to different formats of ebooks, as per the standard; or publishers not assigning ANY ISBNs to their digital editions - inconsistent use of any standard leads to confusion in the marketplace (and new standards being developed to combat problems that proper application of the old standard could have solved - the xkcd problem) 2. Lack of clarity as to what constitutes a use case for assigning a new ISBN on a different DRM system - publishers just donıt believe that different DRM should warrant such a thing; the international ISBN organization disagrees. In truth, because digital books are so siloed on their platform, itıs a use case that practically hasnıt come up yet; until we can read Kobo books on our Kindles, itıs a purely theoretical issue.
3. Lack of uptake on ISTC, which the paper points out. ISTC has not gained traction (in the US at least) for three reasons: Lack of publisher control (anyone can assign an ISTC to a work - a library, an aggregator, a literary agent - it does not have to come from the publisher, which makes publishers uneasy); inability to successfully define across the supply chain what constitutes a ³work² (who decides? Do translations count? What is a ³work² to a publisher is very different from what a ³work² is to a library, to a retailer, to the end user, etc); the likelihood that different editions from different publishers would be linked and consumers would have more choice (publishers benefit from your not knowing that thereıs a competing edition out there somewhere).

I donıt see this issue getting any simpler in the near term, unfortunately.


On 9/23/14, 7:19 AM, "Ivan Herman" <ivan@w3.org> wrote:

>This is just an FYI: may be an interesting to read. Nothing 
>Earth-shattering and, no surprise, the biggest problems for the digital 
>preservation is the unique identification of books and DRM. But it is a 
>good reference to have... (the first issue is clearly related to 
>metadata, too).
>
>Title: Preserving eBooks
>
>Authors: Amy Kirchhoff (Portico) and Sheila Morrissey (Ithaka)
>
>DPC Technology Watch Report 14-01 June 2014
>
>Full Text:
>
>http://dx.doi.org/10.7207/twr14-01
>36 pages; PDF.
>
>Source: Digital Preservation Coalition
>
>Abstract:
>
>This report discusses current developments and issues with which 
>public, national, and higher education libraries, publishers, 
>aggregators, and preservation institutions must contend to ensure 
>long-term access to eBook content. These issues include legal questions 
>about the use, reuse, sharing and preservation of eBook objects; format 
>issues, including the sometimes tight coupling of eBook content with 
>particular hardware platforms; the embedding of digital rights 
>management artefacts in eBook files to restrict access to them; and the 
>diverse business ecosystem of eBook publication, with its associated 
>complexities of communities of use and, ultimately, expectations for 
>preservation.
>
>
>----
>Ivan Herman, W3C
>Digital Publishing Activity Lead
>Home: http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/
>mobile: +31-641044153
>GPG: 0x343F1A3D
>WebID: http://www.ivan-herman.net/foaf#me
>
>
>
>
>

Received on Tuesday, 23 September 2014 16:05:33 UTC