But until the Digital Publishing Interest Group was created (and chaired by members of IDPF), the two worlds of web development and book publishing had not intersected. Now that they have, what could potentially come out of the group?
My primary reason for participating is my job as an expert on metadata and identifiers in the book industry. We've used ISBNs since the 1970s, ONIX since the 1990s. These standards structure how readers find books on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and many other websites. EPUB files contain their own metadata. And certainly the web was built on identifiers (URLs/URIs) and metadata (webpage markup, among other things). As ebooks edge closer to websites in construction, the use of identifiers such as ISBN, ISSN, and ISNI-as well as the use of metadata, such as we have in ONIX-will be extremely useful embedded in the actual HTML of the book. We will be able to link from book to book much as Wikipedia does entry to entry.
Laura Dawson is CEO of Numerical Gurus, LLC, consulting company providing services to the information, librarym and book industries. Dawson has consulted to numerous organizations in these verticals, primarily focusing on solving problems related to metadata, identifiers, Linked Data, semantic web applications, and structured content.