"While there's no shortage of innovation on the digital book front when it comes to new platforms and features, questions of the digital future inevitably seem to lead back to a discussion of discoverability and, by extension, metadata. Up close and personal with XML and tagging, metadata can be the key for expanding audiences and simply being found. Especially for trade publishers, the right metadata can get books into classrooms and retail spaces where they might not have been before. The trick, of course, is to understand how metadata is used and interpreted and to integrate its development into every stage of the workflow process. Keeping up with ever-changing technology and continually updating metadata for backlist titles may seem daunting, but that is why The Metadata Handbook (DataCurate 2012) by Renee Register, Founder of DataCurate and metadata specialist, and Thad McIlroy, epublishing analyst and owner of The Future of Publishing blog, hopes to help clarify what metadata is and why it is important.

For the metadata experts and enthusiasts, The Metadata Handbook doesn't delve too much into the minutiae; rather, it focuses on giving a comprehensive lay of the land in the first three of five parts of the book, and then featuring interviews with publishing professionals about the future of metadata in the final two parts. The former tries to define current metadata practices and how we got there, while the latter addresses the biggest issues facing its use in the future. Most of the themes of the book echo what has been said at conferences for the past few years, but the authors seem intent on covering the basics that everyone in the publishing industry -- not just metadata specialists -- should know about metadata.

The two main themes are the need for standardized metadata across the industry, and the importance of publishers devoting the resources to maintain and develop metadata at all stages of the publishing process. As Len Vlahos, Executive Director of Book Industry Study Group, says in his interview, "I think the industry needs to convene a metadata congress of sorts, with willing participants from all corners of the supply chain. There are problems that can be solved by implementing consistent business processes between trading partners, and... through better communication." This collaboration, he says, can especially help as more publishers move to ONIX 3.0, which he hopes to become even more standard across the industry since it allows users to send changes only to record fields that need to be updated, cutting down on wasted effort..."

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