This is a guest post by Renée Register of DataCurate
Metadata describes a product or a piece of content. It is the “language” used to communicate information needed for commerce. Complete and accurate product description and the ability to efficiently share product and business information electronically are essential for e-commerce in every industry. In this respect metadata for books is unexceptional.
But for books and other content (music, video, etc.) products are increasing “born digital” and delivered electronically. In an increasingly online selling environment, and especially for digital products that have no physical version, a user’s shopping experience totally consists of metadata – information about the product.
The rise of Amazon as an alternative for physical bookstores and the rapid consumer acceptance of ebooks and new reading platforms meant publishers needed to expand their concept of electronic communication from back office business-to-business e-commerce data to robust metadata that is visible to the consumer.
This led to the development of standards, practices, and data carriers that could handle the rich metadata needed to sell content. The international standard for the book metadata seen on Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s website, and other bookselling sites is ONIX for Books, now in version 3.0. Digital publishing also allows publishers to imbed metadata within actual digital content files. EPUB 3, the latest version of the widely used standard for ebook creation, allows many additional options for carrying metadata along with content.
Publisher metadata and publishing technologies are dynamic and are evolving quickly to keep pace with the market. Keep an eye on this space to chart the future of bookselling and the delivery of all digital content. For a deeper look, check out The Metadata Handbook: A Book Publishers’ Guide to Creating and Distributing Metadata for Print and Ebooks.
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