Metadata Committee Charter (2024)

Defining Metadata: What it is and why it matters

Metadata is the information used by publishers to communicate to the global supply chain about a book (in any format) and book-related items. Its audiences include printers, distributors, retailers, educational institutions, libraries, and consumers. Used across all segments of the supply chain, metadata provides the bibliographic, marketing, and commercial guidance that enables publishers to manufacture and sell their books.

Bibliographic metadata builds on multiple standards, such as identifiers or subject classifications. as well as data fields specific to a certain title, author, series, or purpose, like physical specifications for printers. Marketing metadata includes promotional copy, territory, rights, and other fields that define the audience the book is intended to reach. Commercial metadata provides the price, discounts, and other terms relevant to selling a book. All three areas are critical components of how a book is discovered and purchased.

Metadata is broader than BISAC, leading people to a book (discovery), informing the decision to purchase (conversion), and making the global supply chain more efficient. This committee helps shape and communicate metadata standards such as ONIX 3, Thema, ISBN and ISNI. A separate committee maintains and updates the BISAC Subject Codes list. 

Current State

Industry feedback indicates that current priorities are: identifying and sharing ways to better manage metadata across the supply chain; helping the industry provide timely, high-quality metadata; and using metadata to better market and sell books, in part by ensuring that the end user is able to discover relevant and desired content. Metadata can also be used to communicate physical specifications to on-demand printers and audiobook suppliers, enabling production. For physical products, publishers now deliver metadata using the ONIX 3 standard, driven in part by industry requirements. Requirements to use ONIX 3.0 or 3.1 to describe digital products are also growing across the market.

Objectives

• In the U.S. and Canada, educate about and promote the use of standard metadata between trading partners across the book publishing industry. Efforts to educate and promote the use of the standard are targeted at companies of any size or supply chain role, recognizing global applications where relevant.

• To help the industry better create and manage metadata, the committee works to strengthen documentation of the metadata supply chain, identify weaknesses in the current approaches, and make recommendations for operational improvements to metadata or structural changes in the metadata supply chain that would address any shortcomings.

• Build on BISG best-practices recommendations to help metadata providers and recipients provide timely, high-quality metadata for all book formats.

Stakeholder Impact/Benefits

This committee addresses metadata requirements across the supply chain, including publishers, manufacturers, retailers, libraries, distributors, and intermediaries, so that readers have access to the information they need to inform their decisions. Benefits of the committee’s work include:

• Improved understanding of the strengths and weaknesses of the current metadata supply chain, to promote the wider use of best practice, reducing rework and improving the quality of information available across the supply chain (e.g. accuracy of measurements, prices)

• Recommendations for changes that would improve the way metadata is managed between trading partners, with direct application of prior best-practice work in areas that are of greatest need

• Provide support to the important and growing use of metadata as a tool to promote discovery and purchase, particularly as ONIX 3.0 or 3.1 are fully implemented

• Provide guidance on the implementation of the ONIX 3.0.x, and ONIX 3.1

Deliverables

• Publish an updated Metadata Best Practices Guide. Potential changes would address ONIX 3.0 and 3.1, additional information on accessibility, best practices for blocks 7 & 8, inclusion of ISNI in metadata, and (in concert with the workflow committee) metadata and asset packaging for audio products.

• Support BISG’s efforts to transform supply chain communication, participating in work to outline benefits and make the business case for change

• Communicate survey results for metadata best practices to target development opportunities among metadata providers and recipients. Vehicles for improvement can include online education, targeted coursework, and other approaches.

• Promote the use of Thema for sales outside the United States

• Oversee the efforts of an ISNI working group

Blockers

• Ability to recruit committee members from across the supply chain

• Potentially, ability or willingness of supply-chain participants to implement recommendations to improve the metadata supply chain

• Potentially, bandwidth of committee members to tackle multiple projects in a short time frame

Timeline