Transcript Identify and Describe

Identifiers for the
digital world
Brian Green
EDItEUR / International ISBN Agency
The Book Business and International Information Standards
EDItEUR Seminar, Moscow, September 2007
Welcome to the digital age
• Until now, the impact of the Internet has been
largely limited to online sale of printed books
• Academic publishers are already seeing
significant sales of digital books andjournals
• Audiobooks are already being downloaded
• Trade e-books are gradually beginning to sell
– The arrival of an attractive handheld device for ebooks
could accelerate the demand for e-books dramatically
• It will not be a question of ‘if’ digitisation will have
an effect on the general book market, but ‘when’
UK Booksellers Association (Brave New World, 2006)
What do we need to identify?
•
•
•
•
•
E-books, audiobooks
Various digital versions of these
Fragments of these (e.g. chapters, articles)
Ways of linking related products
Links from product identifiers to web locations
E-books and audiobooks
• There is a small but increasing market for
academic and trade e-books
• There are many different formats, for use on both
PCs and handheld devices
• There is already a large market for downloadable
audiobooks, also in different formats and different
MP3 compression ratios
• Booksellers are (or will be) taking orders via their
websites
• Publishers and booksellers need to know exactly
what versions their customers want to order
E-book fragments
• Academic and educational publishers are already
selling individual chapters of academic and text
books for use in course packs
• Trade publishers are building digital asset
management systems to allow parts of their
publications to be made available separately or in
different compilations (e.g. cookbook recipes,
encyclopaedias and other reference books)
• Content not just available online
• Print-on-demand means that these fragments and
compilations may also be available in print form
Can ISBNs satisfy the requirements?
• The scope of ISBN includes digital monographic
publications (i.e. ebooks) both on physical
carriers (e.g. CD-ROMs) or online
• The ISBN standard deals with the issue of
different ebook formats
• ISBNs can be (and are already being) assigned
to parts of books traded separately (e.g.
chapters, recipes)
Issues of granularity: formats
• ISBN Standard (ISO 2108: 2005)
– Different product forms (e.g. hardcover, paperback, Braille, audiobook, video, online electronic publication) shall be assigned separate
ISBNs. Each different format of an electronic publication (e.g.
“.lit”,“.pdf”, “.html”, “.pdb”) that is published and made
separately available shall be given a separate ISBN.
• But what constitutes a new product form?
– The same format ebook with different functionality/DRM?
– The same MP3 audiobook with different compression?
• Principle of functional granularity
– Things should be separately identified only when there is
a need to do so. (e.g. if the supply chain requires it)
• How to link all formats together?
Issues of granularity: fragments
• ISBN Standard (ISO 2108: 2005)
– This International Standard is applicable to monographic
publications (or their individual sections or chapters where
these are made separately available)
• Should publishers assign ISBNs to chapters and
other fragments “just in case”?
• At what level of granularity should a publisher
identify content? (e.g. charts, recipes, poems)
– Principle of functional granularity applies again (i.e.
publishers should only assign separate identifiers to
material that they think will be made separately
available)
International Standard Text Code (ISTC)
• ISBN identifies products
• ISTC will identify underlying works
• Many ways of using ISTC
– One ISTC - many ISBNs
– Several ISTCs - one ISBN
•
•
•
•
Initial driver was for author rights/royalties
Valuable for linking / collocating material
ISO standard to be published later this year
Registration agency: consortium of Bowker,
Nielsen, CISAC, IFRRO
ISTC: linking products
ISBN • Hardback
edition
#B
ISTC #A
Work
created by
author
ISBN • Paperback
edition
#C
ISBN • Audiobook
#D
ISTC: linking products
ISBN • Hardback
edition
#B
ISTC #A
e.g. Da
Vinci Code
ISBN • Paperback
edition
#C
ISBN • Audiobook
#D
ISTC: linking products
ISBN • PDF ebook
#E
ISTC #A
e.g. Da
Vinci Code
ISBN • Mobipocket
ebook
#F
ISBN • HTML ebook
#G
ISTC: building products
ISTC • Paper by
author #X
#A
(David Martin)
ISBN #D
Book of
conference
papers
ISTC • Paper by
author #Y
#B
(Francis Cave)
ISTC • Paper by
author #Z
#C
(Peter Kilborn)
ISTC: building products
ISTC • Recipe by
author #X
#D
(David Martin)
ISBN #G
EDItEUR
Cook Book
ISTC • Recipe by
author #Y
#E
(Francis Cave)
ISTC • Recipe by
author #Z
#F
(Peter Kilborn)
Web-enabling the ISBN
• Currently ISBN does not automatically link to
anything on the web (except using Google etc)
• Why web-enable the ISBN?
– To link a publication’s identity to its internet location or
to metadata (e.g. product information)
– To use multiple resolution to link manifestations,
fragments etc.
• The Digital Object Identifier (DOI) can help
• 30 million journal articles are already identified
and linked using DOIs
Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
• DOI is both an identifier and a system for
resolving identifiers to URLs
• Provides persistent linking using it’s own
resolution service and database to ensure no
dead links
• Capable of multiple resolution (linking one DOI to
several URLs offering different services)
• A hybrid ISBN/DOI syntax is being developed,
e.g.
ISBN:
The DOI would be:
978-86-123-4567-8
10.978.86123/45678
Some conclusions
• Identifiers now in place or under development
seem adequate for our needs
• Trade and libraries need to work together on
shared standards more than they have done in
the past
• Trading digital content and expressing usage
rights is complex
• “Make things as simple as possible but not
simpler” (Albert Einstein)
Links
• UK Booksellers Association report on ebooks
– http://www.booksellers.org.uk/doc/
• International ISBN Agency
– www.isbn-international.org
• Digital Object Identifier
– www.doi.org
• Other ISO identifiers (including ISTC)
– www.collectionscanada.ca/iso/tc46sc9/