Who are we? what is it? what can I do with it? and why does it matter? Some thoughts on identity and identification in an increasingly complex environment
Agenda Introduction Mark Bide (EDItEUR) Identifying people, places and organizations Helen Henderson (Ringgold) Identifying resources Brian Green (International ISBN Agency) Identifying deals Mark Bide (EDItEUR)
Introduction Mark Bide
The things we need to identify: the <indecs> model of commerce People make is used by Stuff do about Deals
What are identifiers? An identifier is a unique expression in a written format either by a code, by numbers or by the combination of both to distinguish variations from one to another among a class of substances, items, or objects. In computer science, identifiers are lexical tokens (that is, nouns ) that name entities (or things ). The concept is analogous to that of a "name." Identifiers are used extensively in virtually all information processing systems. Naming entities makes it possible to refer to them, which is essential for any kind of symbolic processing. [Based on Wikipedia]
Why do we need identifiers? Identifiers are just a special class of name Unique within a given context Why do we assign identifiers? Collocation to bring together instances of the same thing Disambiguation to distinguish things that are not the same What does the same mean? Whether things are or are not the same is always contextual For example, an ISBN identifies a class of individual instances as being the same for particular purposes meaning is not universal Why does this matter? Unambiguous communication particularly from machine to machine (people don t often use unique identifiers in discourse that one over there is usually enough)
Why do we need standard identifiers? When there is a need to communicate across organizational boundaries within any sort of supply chain particularly where anyone in the supply chain needs to manage and aggregate information from multiple sources That means nearly everyone, particularly in a digital supply chain What matters about standard identifiers? That their semantic should be clear to everyone in other words, everyone in the chain knows what type of thing they are identifying
Why do we need identifiers? The Web was designed as an information space, with the goal that it should be useful not only for human human communication, but that also machines would be able to participate One of the major obstacles to this has been the fact that most information on the Web was designed for human consumption. Tim Berners-Lee The Semantic Web (1998)
So, if we are to make the semantic web a reality We need to establish chains of identifiers Identifiers with explicit and well understood semantics We need to link them together with relators which have well-defined semantics We need to establish and manage the relationships that are important to us We need to be careful about trivializing the task Everything is related to everything else at some level Saying that two things are the same is complex, because it is always contextual [an ISBN does not identify a book ]
Identifying people, places and organizations Helen Henderson
Iden%fiers: People, Places and Organiza%ons Helen Henderson Ringgold helen@ringgold.com
Types of Iden7fiers (in our space) o People o ISNI o Researcher ID o Scopus Author Iden7fier o ORCID o Places o GLN o SAN o UN LOC o Organiza7ons o D- U- N- S o. and many tax related iden7fiers o ISIL o ISNI o MARC Org Code o OCLC Symbol
What is the need? o Places o Delivery of physical objects o Tax regime o People o Rights payments o Author affilia7on (ownership) o Disambigua7on o Organiza%ons o Delivery and en7tlements o Access rights o Hierarchy o Usually comes down to MONEY
Places o GLN (Global Locator Number) o Physical loca7on o Legal en7ty o Maintained by GS1 (formerly EAN Interna7onal) o SAN (Standard Address Number) o Specific street address o ANSI/NISO standard o Maintained by Bowker o UN LOC (United Na%ons Code for Trade and Transport Loca%ons) o Trade loca7ons (e.g. airports, ports) o Coordinates o Maintained by UN Economic Commission for Europe
People o ISNI (Interna%onal Standard Name Iden%fier) o Names include people and organiza7ons o Ini7al emphasis rights holders o Maintained by Interna7onal ISNI Agency (consor7um of na7onal libraries and bibliographic u7li7es) o Virtual Interna%onal Authority File o Jointly run by LC, BnF, DNB and OCLC o Implemented and hosted by OCLC o ~20 files from around the world o 13 million name records o 10 million clusters o Plan to include other names Corpora7ons, works, geographics, families, imaginary characters, etc. Not topical subject headings
More People o Proprietary Author Iden%fiers o Scopus (Elsevier) o Scholar Universe (COS) o Researcher ID (Thomson Reuters) o RePEc (Research Paper in Economics) o ORCID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) o Open version of Thomson Reuter s Researcher ID o Most social Claiming IDs Interac7ve verifica7on of associated works Pulling together several current ini7a7ves o Driven by STM, university communi7es o Primarily interested in researchers o Large number of par7cipants o Mostly concerned with present and future names
Organiza7ons o D- U- N- S. and many tax related iden7fiers o Related to corporate en77es o OCLC Symbol o Library iden7fier o Maintained by OCLC o ISIL (Interna7onal Standard Iden7fier for Libraries - ISO 15511) o Libraries only o Na7onal agencies o MARC Org Code o Library iden7fier o Maintained by LC o ISNI (Interna7onal Standard Name Iden7fier ISO 27729) o Recently adopted o Emphasis on individuals o Central registry o Registra7on agencies
More organiza7ons o OCLC WorldCat Registry ID o Library iden7fier o Voluntary registra7on and maintenance o NISO I2 o Interna7onal Ins7tu7onal Iden7fier o Hierarchical structure with rela7onships o Iden7fies licensing units o May be a sub- registry of ISNI, s7ll to be decided o Ringgold Iden%fier o 200,000 ins7tu7ons or ins7tu7onal en77es o Worldwide, all categories o Used by over 40 publishers and agents
Exis7ng Iden7fiers Inves7gated for use with I2 Iden%fier Name ISIL (ISO 15511) OCLC symbol OCLC WorldCat Registry ID MARC organiza7on code ISNI (ISO 27729) SAN Standard address number GLN Global loca7on number DUNS Data Universal Numbering Interna7onal Standard for Describing Ins7tu7ons with Archival Holdings Informa7on (ISDIAH) Current Status Interna7onal Standard OCLC specific OCLC specific MARC standard Final Commijee drak NISO standard Z39.43-1993 GS1 (formerly EAN interna7onal) Dun and Bradstreet New standard 2008 Interna7onal Council on Archives
What is next for I2? o NISO Working Group o Publishers o Agents o Distributors o Libraries o Hos7ng services o Ins7tu7onal Repositories o Scenarios o Electronic supply chain o Consor7a o Research funding o Inter- library loan o Implementa%on
Identifying resources Brian Green
e-books in particular Brian Green International ISBN Agency
What matters is that everyone in the chain knows what type of thing they are identifying FRBR: Book Industry Endeavour realization embodiment exemplar WORK EXPRESSION MANIFESTATION ITEM concept: e.g. Moby-Dick realizationof both e.g. concept author s and original content text embodimentof exemplarof
What matters is that everyone in the chain knows what type of thing they are identifying ISTC/ISBN embodiment exemplar ISTC ISBN ACCESSION Number embodimentof exemplarof
Collocation to bring together instances of the same thing The International Standard Text Code Unambiguously identifies a textual work, even though it may be published in many different forms (One ISTC may link to many ISBNs) For use in improved discovery services, collocation, rights and royalties etc. Identifies content separately from the products which contain it Also identifies the relationships between items of content (ONIX for ISTC registration) e.g. Abridged, Annotated, Compilation, Critical, Excerpt, Expurgated, Non-text material added or revised, Revised, Translated
Publisher record at work level Example from Publishing Technology
Link to various manifestations Example from Publishing Technology
Link to various manifestations One metadata record multiple ISBNS Example from Publishing Technology
Disambiguation to distinguish things that are not the same Under Rules of assignment, the 2005 revision of the ISBN standard (ISO 2108) says: 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. Seemed adequate at the time but file format not really an appropriate indicator of different products
What differentiates e-book products? Ability to render book Does it work on my device/platform/software? User s experience and usage rights What can I do with it? File format only part of the story. DRM is what really differentiates e-book products and platforms
Why identify separate e-book products? To ensure that the e-book ordered is the correct one for the user s e-reader device and/or software platform To enable bibliographic databases to provide information about the different available versions of an e-book To facilitate electronic trading of e-books, particularly where multiple formats are sold through the same channel To facilitate product level reporting of sales and usage and facilitate management of e-book products
The e-book supply chain For printed books, publishers assign ISBNs to each format, and that product and it s ISBN remains constant throughout the supply chain For e-books, there is an additional layer of intermediaries providing conversion services to publishers and producing new e-book products Many publishers only produce a single generic file format (e.g..epub or PDF ), and intermediaries or Internet retailers add technical rights protection (DRM) and create different formats/products
Publisher Conversion Library platform NetLibrary Library PDF XML Disassemble Markup.epub PDF Add DRM EDI order Jobber YBP, Ingram etc Random, HarperCollins, Faber... Master format ebrary Add DRM Library Convert.epub/PDF EDI order Libre Digital, Ingram, PubDim, VCI....epub PDF Convert Add DRM epub+drm Acct No OPAC Library ID Consumer Overdrive white label... MyiLibrary, Overdrive etc.
New ISBN rule introduced 2008 Since some publishers do not provide separate ISBNs for each version and some customers, including libraries, need unique identification of products from different platforms with different functionality If a publisher does not identify each format with a separate ISBN, intermediaries/re-sellers may do so on their behalf Not ideal but a necessary compromise until publishers assign their own ISBNs Requires central bibliographic agency to collect and list ISBNs and related metadata
What s actually happening? Everything. It s like the 1960 s before ISBN. Some publishers assign separate ISBNs to each version Some assign the same ISBN to all versions Some publishers assign an ISBN to the epub file and let third parties assign their own ISBNs or proprietary identifiers to their versions Sometimes these proprietary ISBN-like identifiers actually duplicate ISBNs assigned to books already published elsewhere
All different
All the same
Whether things are or are not the same is always contextual Results of ISBN survey 2009/2010: There is a need for each digital format to be separately identified at various points in the supply chain However there seems to be a need for a more abstract generic identifier to collocate different versions of the same books ISTC identifies underlying textual works and is a potentially useful way of aggregating different manifestations and their ISBNs regardless of media
Library comments from ISBNsurvey Essential to have a single 'matching point' to compare collections, pull-in usage data, exclude already-purchased titles from lists, etc. Useful to have a second ISBN for each platform as different platforms have different DRM etc. Combined with a single ISBN for all formats, would help to identify where we have purchased the same title from more than one platform. The use of a single ISBN would enable provider-neutral records and act similarly to eissns. Open link resolution, federated search, and unified discovery platforms would also benefit from the use of a single eisbn. It is also useful to have some sort of identifier by platform, particularly for back-end vendor operations.
In summary The use of a single ISBN to identify multiple e-book formats is confusing and potentially unsafe If two things are given the same identifier it becomes very hard to distinguish between them if/when we need to The International ISBN Agency continues to recommend that publishers should assign ISBNs to each e-book version separately available (n.b. version needs defining) but we also need to use identifiers at higher levels of abstraction (ISTC?) Consistent application of standard identifiers is essential particularly where anyone in the supply chain needs to manage and aggregate information from multiple sources
Identifying deals Mark Bide
We are getting better at automating license communication Creative Commons: http://creativecommons.org standard licences most appropriate for noncommercial content [?] machine and human readable and related approaches such as the UK s Open Government Licence ONIX-PL: www.editeur.org a standard for the communication of publishers licenses to libraries, to make complex information human readable ACAP: www.the-acap.org a standard machine to machine communication of permissions, developed mainly in support of the news sector PLUS Coalition: http://www.useplus.com standards for licensing photographs and other visual images, machine and human readable ODRL: http://odrl.net/ Open Digital Rights Language machine decidable permissions v2.0 in development 48
Related infrastructural developments The Book Rights Registry ( the Google Settlement ): http://books.google.com/googlebooks/agreement/ Global Repertoire Database (GRD) http://globalrepertoiredatabase.com/faq.html The ARROW project: http://www.arrow-net.eu/ PLUS seeking to establish registries for visual images 49
Standards for license identification Musical Works License Identifier (MWLI) There appears to be work to do here..
Conclusions and discussion
Some questions for discussion At what level would you like to see manifestations separately identified? By channel? By DRM / usage features? Should 2 e-book versions from different channels but with the same usage features share an ISBN At what level would you like to see them collocated? All manifestations regardless of media? All e-books (but excluding print and audio)? What can libraries do about it?
Thanks for coming Helen Henderson helen@ringgold.com Brian Green brian@isbn-international.org Mark Bide mark@editeur.org ISBN: www.isbn-international.org ISTC: www.istc-international.org 53