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Metadata Watch Report #3

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 | section 3 | section 4 | section 6 ]

Section 5 - Domain reports

5.1 Industry sector
5.2 Publishing sector
5.3 Audio-visual sector
5.4 Cultural Heritage sector
5.5 Educational sector
5.6 Academic sector
5.7 Geographical information sector

5.2 Publishing sector

Correspondent: Laurie Causton, Clearbay Limited

5.2.1 Current state of domain

The last few months have seen progressive developments and announcements rather than milestones. The major area of activity remains electronic publishing, and in particular the various issues of rights within this.

Governmental - or perhaps quasi-governmental - interests in this area are discussed in the document from the Electronic Publishing, Books and Archives Project of the Council of Europe, "Draft guidelines on legislation and policy measures for book development and electronic publishing" (http://culture.coe.fr/epba/eng/ecubookR.5.htm).

A little progress in the news domain - the IPTC has ratified NewsML v1.0.

In September:

  • CISAC held its General Assembly in Santiago, again with a focus on digital rights management, and a recognition of importance of identifiers.
  • there was an announcement of a major revision of the Santa Fe convention of the Open Archives Initiative, resulting from experiences gained and a growing interest in the application of Santa Fe convention-concepts outside its original domain of e-prints.

October saw a number of announcements:

  • the RIAA signalled its intention to develop a new identification system for sound recording, primarily to "facilitate and accelerate the growth of digital delivery of music on the Internet." More on this below.
  • at the Frankfurt Book Fair the International DOI Foundation announced the formation of a new IDF Working Group - DOI-EB (DOI for E-books), to focus on the development of proofs-of-concept for the use of DOIs with e-books, taking into account related work such as the recommendations of the AAP/Anderson Consulting report on e-book numbering and activities in the Open e-Book Forum, the Electronic Book Exchange Working Group, ONIX International, as well as the IDF's own work on metadata standards and registration procedures.
  • and at its quarterly Work Summit, the Open e-Book Forum itself released a document, "A Framework for the Epublishing Ecology" (http://www.openebook.org/framework) aimed at facilitating standards work in DRM and other epublishing areas. The OeBF sees this document as a key component of two initiatives, announced at the same time - its requirements gathering and harmonizing initiative, with a focus on digital rights management (DRM); and a standards coordination initiative, discussed below.

5.2.2 Overlaps and gaps identification

The progress of the new RIAA identifier initiative will be interesting to watch - it is an identification system for music, with an emphasis on rights issues. It will aim to be fully compatible with the existing ISRC, but the music world already has a number of identifier- and rights-related activities - including the ISRC itself, the Secure Digital Music Initiative (SDMI), and the Interdeposit Digital Number (IDDN) (http://www.iddn.org) which also has music application.

Nevertheless, overlaps and parallel activity are perhaps inevitable, and maybe with this in mind, the OeBF inaugurated the new initiative in standards coordination noted above - this will involve regular technical coordination workshops to provide a forum for coordination and liaison between the various disparate, but related, standards efforts. There will be representation from a significant number of bodies including EBX, NISO, W3C, the International Publishers Association, MPEG, the American Association of Publishers, IDF, and Editeur. One to watch, perhaps.

5.2.3 Trends

The e-book industry continues to gain momentum, with estimates of $12million sales in downloaded books in 1999 . Predictions for the future vary but still indicate an enormous growth. However digital rights management, copyright and copy protection, and anti-piracy continue to be the major issue for the industry bodies. Not surprisingly, this arises from understandable commercial concerns of revenue protection - as a Microsoft representative pointed out, calling for a focus on copy protection. " without the ability to make a profit, we don't have a business".

The concept of Application Profiles is relatively new. Its "predecessor," the Warwick Framework, had a promising start, but here not much has happened since. Application Profiles are still largely under discussion in the academic and library domain, and as yet there is little related activity in this publishing world, but if they gain credence, then there may be merit in investigating their use in publishing. There are areas where APs might offer a useful solution, where the standard concept of a publication or book is no longer adequately addressed by established metadata approaches. An example might be a reference book on music, published with an attached CD containing musical works, some perhaps copyrighted.

5.2.4 Main issues

There is a view that the major obstacle for publishers to successful e-book development and growth is the lack of a standard, secure method of exchanging e-book content. This seems to fall squarely within the remit of the Electronic Book Exchange Working Group (EBX). Even so, it is perhaps worth noting in this context that, while the OeBF enjoys a good representation from publishers (and booksellers), these are lacking in the membership of EBX, whose members are generally those companies with a vested interest in the development of the enabling technologies. Nonetheless, it has to be said that publishers and booksellers (typically the same ones that you find in the OeBF membership) participate in EBX activity.

In essence, of course, the issue here is rights, which will continue to predominate, and we will undoubtedly see much more of the separate but often overlapping activity in this area, particularly as the boundaries between different forms of content become less distinct. The OeBF's coordination initiative might play a useful role here.

5.2.5 Activity planned for the next period

The e-Book World conference is to take place in early November in New York, and is claimed to be the first event dedicated solely to the electronic book marketplace. It will focus on the technological aspects of e-book publishing, and the concerns facing traditional publishers.

The next DOI Workshop, also to be held in November, will look at, among other things, e-books and metadata.

The OeBF Working Group Summit takes place in December 2000, and will host a workshop of the coordination initiative.

>>Section 5.3 Audio-visual sector

[ contents | section 1 | section 2 | section 3 | section 4 | section 6 ]

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Last updated: 07 August 2001