The sheer number of metadata standards in the cultural heritage sector is overwhelming, and their inter-relationships further complicate the situation. A new resource, Seeing Standards: A Visualization of the Metadata Universe, is intended to assist planners with the selection and implementation of metadata standards.
With Digital Publishing, Bad Data = Lost Sales
Kobo gives us some examples of how data issues can impact your book sales in the digital market.Sending good quality metadata in the first place will help you get your books to your readers on time. And that’s what we all want, right?
I asked Michael to list the most common metadata issues they see at Kobo. Here is his list (in order).
BNC 101: What Is XML?
What is XML? is the first in a series of BNC 101 blog posts where we’re going to try our best to break down some of the complex tech concepts we talk about all the time into plain language.
XML is a term that gets thrown around the publishing industry a lot, but what does it actually mean?
ISBNs: It’s 11PM—Do You Know Where Your Product Records Are?
You’d think you were at Market Day in Ganges there’s such PANDEMONIUM out there. Everyone’s talking about Product Identifiers — live twitter discussions, position papers staked by major organizations, and the BISG has no less than two dedicated industry groups (maybe three) discussing issues around ISBNs, e-Books and ISTC to make sure that their supply chain perspective is heard.
I’m lucky enough to be able to participate in some of the BISG discussion, quietly like a good Canadian will, but I know the Canadian supply chain wants to know what to do.
We the Supply Chain
The sixth annual AMR Supply Chain Top 25 report has just been released and it has me thinking about the role that BookNet Canada plays in the publishing industry trying to raise awareness of the supply chain discipline and how it impacts business.
Cracking Codes: New BISAC Subjects on BNC SalesData
Maybe this isn’t code breaking Robert-Langdon-style, but the new BISAC code list that came out in November 2009 is reflected in BNC SalesData now. After it was released, it was integrated into R.R. Bowker’s bibliographic database and then from Bowker into BNC SalesData around the middle of April.
Here is a refresher on why we use BISAC.
Happy Birthday, ONIX!
The BiblioShare Certification Challenge
BNC BiblioShare is going gangbusters with over 230,000 EANs in the system, over 12,000 Canadian author markers and aggregators starting to experiment with the data. It seems like a good time to take stock.
ISTC: A Duffer’s Perspective
I had the good fortune to attend BISG’s meeting on Tuesday “Focus on ISTC” which was a supplement to Michael Holdsworth’s recent paper:
The International Standard Text Code (ISTC): A Work in Progress / A Supply Chain Perspective
The short message for Canadian publishers and data suppliers is that the US and UK supply chain is taking the ISTC seriously and that Canadian publishers should be familiarizing themselves with it too. You might need to be using it soon.
Get Ready for the ISTC
The ISTC (International Standard Textual Code) is starting to get some serious interest from different areas in the book supply-chain.
