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Metadata Watch Report #2

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 ]

Section 3 - Domain reports

3.1 Audio-visual sector
3.2 Educational sector
3.3 Academic sector
3.4 Geographical information sector
3.5 Publishing sector

3.5 Publishing sector

1. United we stand, divided we stand?

The diversity of initiatives and schemes continues, some sharing common ground but with different objectives, and so the scene remains quite complex. While it is true that some initiatives indicate that they take into account others with some degree of commonality, taking something into account can simply mean that it is considered, then discarded. How much convergence and interoperability will result in the longer term remains to be seen.

Some more central and established developments seem to be more generally embraced; Dublin Core, for example, finds itself in the Electronic Book Exchange (EBX) metadata proposals, in PRISM, and in SantaFe. Of course, whatever its strengths and weakness, DC has the useful advantage that it is already here, which has an undeniable attraction for any initiative looking for a structure for its metadata. The DOI appears to continue to make headway, perhaps not surprisingly in view of its more commercial orientation; business interests have a way of promoting progress.

2. The digital domain

As one of the more visible growth areas in publishing, the digital world has seen a good level of activity.

MPEG are calling for proposals for Intellectual Property Management and Protection (IPMP) solutions for multimedia applications, evidence perhaps of the current focus in the rights domain on content protection and delivery; as noted in the previous report - more on this later. And shortly to kick off is the grandly named CUIDADO (Content-based Unified Interfaces and Descriptors for Audio/music Databases available Online - which surely merits an award for an inventive acronym), an Esprit project co-ordinated by Ircam and aiming to employ the MPEG7 standard.

There is certainly growth in the emerging electronic book market. The EBX Working Group have released their latest draft technical specification, which introduces a Dublin Core-based format for what they term "concise" metadata, "used for such purposes as identifying available and preferred content formats, logging a transaction, identifying an e-book in an error message, and displaying the progress of downloading an e-book." For "extended" metadata, "describing an e-book on a bookseller’s Web site and cataloguing an e-book in a library," they nod towards ONIX and MARC.

Development of the EPICS e-book metadata set continues, and America's Book Industry Study Group is starting to take on the challenges ahead, setting itself the task of developing standards for emerging technologies. "Electronic books, metadata, and XML are poised to change the book industry," comments the BISG. The work to be done will be co-ordinated by a newly appointed Executive Director and, although not yet announced in detail, appears once again to be focussed at least in part on rights, noting "the increased emphasis on standards to both describe the content of … transactions and to protect the intellectual property rights of the creators."

Equally, the US ISBN Agency has recently issued a paper discussing the role of the ISBN in the digital world, having already identified a number of formats of digital editions which should receive ISBNs. Moreover, while there has been no formal metadata for ISBN, but in its place for some time now a form of de facto metadata context, the paper reminds us that the International ISBN Agency is currently establishing the core metadata needed for both print-on-paper and digital ISBN products, in conjunction with EDItEUR International.

3. Identifier Watch

Identifiers remain closely linked to many emerging metadata initiatives, and vice versa. Understandable perhaps, given the importance of an effective identification of the object or resource to which the metadata will apply - how do you describe something if it is not clearly identified? In this way, the identifier can become an integral part of the metadata element set. And conversely, some developers of identification schemes are recognising the importance of attached metadata.

Intelligent identifiers, of course, can be said to embed a certain level of metadata by virtue of their structure. Even so, the ISBN community, already considering metadata needs as noted above, have been discussing the removal of both the country/regional and publisher identifiers from the ISBN, thus turning it into a completely "dumb" number. In this eventuality, the corresponding metadata structure would grow in significance.

The draft standard for the International Standard Textual Work Code (ISTC) has been issued, for discussion at the working group's next meeting in September. This initial draft indicates that the proposed International ISTC Agency will have among its responsibilities the maintenance of a central database of ISTC numbers and their accompanying metadata. That said, as yet there is no definition of what form this metadata will take, although indications are that the EPICS Data Dictionary might be involved, but these are early days; the draft in fact focuses more on administrative issues, and has yet to address even the ISTC format.

A call has been issued for a 5-year evaluation of the Serial Item and Component Identifier (SICI). The structure and syntax of the SICI remain problematic and may be an obstacle to useful implementation, and in any event it is possible that part of its target area of application - article and article/component level - may be usurped by the DOI. NISO have released a draft standard for trial use of its cousin, the Book Item and Component Identifier (BICI), with the review period ending in January 2002.

4. Rights - protecting one's own

Development in the rights arena continues to focus on protection, ownership and intellectual property rather than rights transactions. This is perhaps an inevitable result of the rapid proliferation of digital dissemination and the consequent response of the commercial, profit-oriented, parties involved - witness the recent MP3 saga.

While relevant developments continue, such as MPEG's IPMP and XrML, recent activity seems more concerned with combating piracy. Presumably mindful that an MP3-style revolution could happen in the incipient e-book industry, the Association of American Publishers (AAP) are to collaborate with Microsoft "on a broad educational and enforcement initiative" to fight e-book piracy. Equally a glance at the current home page of the IFPI's Web site might lead one to believe that piracy is the only issue on the agenda.

5. So what else is new?

The beta of version 1.0 of NewsML, the XML-based standard for news creation, storage and delivery, has been released by the IPTC.

The DOI-based CROSSREF service has "gone live", aiming to provide persistent, efficient reference links between citations in articles in scientific, technical and medical (STM) journals. Membership has grown to thirty-three publishers and the metadata database now embraces more than one million article records.

The INDECS project has now formally closed, but the work does not stop there. The partners have established a not-for-profit membership organisation, called the Indecs Framework Ltd, to carry forward the work. Close co-operation with the International DOI Foundation (IDF) is planned.

One of the most significant developments arising out of INDECS, the ONIX standard for the exchange of bibliographic metadata, has been released in version 1.1, receiving early endorsement from major online suppliers such as Amazon and Barnes&Noble.

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 ]

Maintained by: UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN)
Last updated: 07 August 2001