Identifiers for the digital world

1. Identifiers for the digital world Brian Green EDItEUR / International ISBN Agency The Book Business and International Information Standards EDItEUR Seminar, Moscow, September 2007

2. 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)

3. 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

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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)

7. Issues of granularity: formats • ISBN Standard (ISO 2108: 2005) • Different product forms (e.g. hardcover, paperback, Braille, audio-book, 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?

8. 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)

9. 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

10. ISTC: linking products ISTC #A Work created by author

11. ISTC: linking products ISTC #A e.g. Da Vinci Code

12. ISTC: linking products ISTC #A e.g. Da Vinci Code

13. ISTC: building products ISBN #D Book of conference papers

14. ISTC: building products ISBN #G EDItEUR Cook Book

15. 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

16. 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: 978-86-123-4567-8 The DOI would be: 10.978.86123/45678

17. 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)

18. 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/