The document discusses Thema, a classification system that can improve book discovery through judicious use of subject categories and qualifiers. It provides examples of how qualifiers like place, time period, and audience interests can expand discoverability of related titles. If the book industry more fully leverages Thema's powerful capabilities to connect metadata, it can deliver better browsing experiences online and in bookstores to match readers with potential interests.

1. Kieron Smith - Thursday 8th June

2. • Introduction
• A reminder of the basic building blocks
• Let’s look at a (real world) example
• The (untapped) power of qualifiers
• What’s the opportunity here?

5. F- Fiction and
Related Items
FBA - Modern and
contemporary fiction:
general and literary
FBC - Classic fiction:
general and literary
FB - Fiction: general
and literary
1 –
Place
3 -
Time
4 -
Educational
purpose
5 -
Interest
2 -
Language
6 - Style
https://ns.editeur.org/thema/en
Categories and Qualifiers

6. F- Fiction and
Related Items
FBA - Modern and
contemporary fiction:
general and literary
FBC - Classic fiction:
general and literary
FB - Fiction: general
and literary
1 –
Place
3 - Time
4 -
Educational
purpose
5 -Interest
2 -
Language
6 - Style
https://ns.editeur.org/thema/en

7. …purchases of over 656,872 unique titles in the last twenty-
four months - to over 115 countries.
Google’s guess - back in the heady days of 2010 - was that
there are around 129,864,880 unique titles – we have about
18m of those available (13.86%).
Plus – a certain ‘large internet retailer’ has become worse at
surfacing these titles, and Google often sees uniform metadata
from the same booksellers over and over… rather than being
able to present their own views of the metadata.

8. The internet gave people the power to make connections, it
increased communication and created a long tail of niches and
easy access to interests.
The cultural context has changed, we’re now in a world where
purely hierarchical product classifications are not sufficient to
meet the demands of the audience – themes, niches and
identities are core to how we experience content and how we
engage in discovery.

9. All the building blocks you need are already there.
Thema is a fantastically powerful tool, the industry just needs
to:
1. Know the rules
2. Use it to its full extent
Let’s look at a couple of examples…

10. - "thema_qual_code": "1DT|3MP",
- "thema_subject": "European history|The Cold War|Marxism & Communism",
- "thema_subject_code": "NHD|NHTW|JPFC",
- "title": "Beyond the Wall",
Eastern Europe 20th century, c1900 to c 1999

11. jj
NHD - European History
Time period qualifiers
(codes starting with 3*)
3MPQ-DE-J –
c 1945 to c 1990 (the Cold War period)
Place qualifiers (codes starting with 1*)
1DFG-DE-F - East Germany

12. If I’m interested in East Germany could I also be interested in East German
philosophers, on fiction, architecture – but they all sit in different parts of the
hierarchical tree.

13. "thema_subject_code": "FHD | NHTW | FF“
Espionage spy thriller & Crime & Mystery Fiction… (no qualifiers)
These two seem to have wandered in to
the incorrect category…

14. The ability to link all these drops of data properly into one big
picture - which can connect people to book information beyond
each individual data bucket
…and this is where it gets really interesting.

15. "thema_qual_code":
"5PMB | 5PMJ

17. 5AZ
Could you limit your market? No – just an additional lens.

18. One other example, a book on accessible
design of household objects for people with
physical impairments; could use AKP–
Product design (20,000 books in that
category) with the qualifier 5PMB [Relating
to people with mobility or physical
disabilities or impairments].

19. • These can be critical to the way that books are merchandised and promoted.
By-the-way…
• all Y* codes need one 5A* qualifier [Interest Age] (or in the case of YP* codes
at least one 4C* [educational levels] qualifier).

20. Find the right balance for the number of subject codes you include for each title. One subject
code may be appropriate for some titles. Try to aim for a maximum of four subject codes per
title and use excess choices of codes to improve descriptive texts or keywords.
Aim to add qualifiers whenever appropriate (probably not more than six). Apply the same
guidelines to each type of qualifier.

21. *Data from 2021
Personally feel that browsing (online) is very underwhelming.

22. Not just online…
• Booksellers spend their lives
making lists.
• Account business, for example
how we serve the NHS.
• Using Thema well is an opportunity
to have better bookshops, giving
the power to the bookshops to use it
to better serve their customers.

23. • This can also help upstream as well, for example if we are able to combine titles using
appropriate qualifiers then this gives a different lens – for example within Google or
links from social media as one of our challenges here is the perceived consistency of
catalogue data – Google thinks all bookshops are equal but this is a way to
demonstrate how we add value to the metadata.
• The international nature of Thema is also crucial, a significant proportion of both
Blackwell and Wordery’s sales are export, we plan to utilise the mapping between
categories to enable our overseas customers to filter according to their local needs –
for example translating Key Stages here into something meaningful.

24. I hope you’ve got an inkling of the amazing
possibilities we have if we use Thema to its
full potential.
We can all do something about this within our
own roles in the industry …but it also needs
critical mass – so also need you to win over
new converts to the cause.

25. Thema is a powerful tool which can enable people across the
industry to deliver on the promise of discovery.
Judicious use of both subject category (four if you must) and
qualifier (up to six) - can expand the audience for your titles (or if
you’re a bookseller help you find them in the first place).
Successful management of metadata on titles is a crucial part of
ensuring a title is successful, and only going to get more
important.