Presentation to AAP Digital Working Group

A Million Little Pieces
Identifying Digital Book Content

Cecin’est pas un livre
Different formats
Ebooks – EPUB, Kindle, PDF, downloadable audio
Physical books – hardcover, trade paper, mass market, large print, POD, audiobook
Chapter-by-chapter – does the customer need/want the whole book?
Some books make great websites
Travel (Frommers.com)
Recipes (Epicurious)

Identifying ebooks
One ISBN/format?
Maintaining metadata on all these formats is confusing and repetitive
ISBNs are expensive
ISBN for EPUB only?
Ebookdistribs will assign ISBNs (or other identifiers) – publishers not in control
How to track sales for different formats?
New identifier?
Reinventing the wheel
How to get the book industry to use it consistently?
Standards take a long time to get through ISO

Identifying chapters
ISBN bloat in databases (Caravan project)
Exponentially more complicated than one- ISBN-per-ebook-format
Cost of ISBNs for something like this is prohibitive for many publishers
Cost to industry of inventing a new identifier for chapters
DOI is useful – but is a pointer to content location – content still needs to be identified

Identifying “chunks”
Exponentially complex
For sale or display or license?
How to locate relevant chunks in GBS and Internet Archive?

The Lady or the Tiger?
Assign ISBNs to everything in sight (and deal with the metadata pandemonium)
Invent new identifiers (which will take many years)
Let the marketplace decide (and cede discoverability to third parties)

Useful resources
BISG/BISAC Identifiers Subcommittee – www.bisg.org
US ISBN Agency – www.isbn.org
LJNDawson – www.ljndawson.com
Persona Non Data – personanondata.blogspot.com

Presentation to AAP Digital Working Group

by ljnd on Sep 17, 2009

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Presentation to AAP Digital Working Group — Presentation Transcript