Karen, First, don't denigrate the work you've done at DP compared to what people in this group have done or might do. Your stuff is what makes this worth doing (and even talking about.) It should also be what largely determines the requirements and priorities for PG and DP development. I think "librarianship" is a good metaphor for PG's role for purposes of your question. To what degree does PG function as a library - assemble books in a common store, make sure they are in good shape, and make it easy to find and acquire books (for free!). Do the degree that's accurate, then your understanding of metadata is pretty good - as it applies to PG more than to the construction of ebooks. But the DP production line is a good place to collect and identify some of that metadata, because it's inherent in the title page and other areas we work on. DP's markup could make it a lot easier to do this. Currently though it mostly just associates it with display formatting (size, font, etc.) and the opportunity is lost. I personally already include it as specific tags in the editor I'm building for eb.tbicl.org. Here's a specific example of a project title page as it currently appears. [title-page] [title]ASTRONOMY WITH AN OPERA-GLASS [/title] [subtitle]A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO THE STUDY OF THE STARRY HEAVENS WITH THE SIMPLEST OF OPTICAL INSTRUMENTS [/subtitle] [subsubtitle] WITH MAPS AND DIRECTIONS TO FACILITATE THE RECOGNITION OF THE CONSTELLATIONS AND THE PRINCIPAL STARS VISIBLE TO THE NAKED EYE [/subsubtitle] BY [author]GARRETT P. SERVISS[/author] <epigram> "Known are their laws; in harmony unroll The nineteen-orbed cycles of the Moon. And all the signs through which Night whirls her car From belted Orion back to Orion and his dauntless Hound, And all Poseidon's, all high Zeus' stars Bear on their beams true messages to man." <attribution>Poste's Aratus.</attribution> </epigram> [edition]THIRD EDITION[/edition] [publisher] NEW YORK D. APPLETON AND COMPANY London: Caxton House, Paternoster Square [pub-date]1890[/pub-date] [/publisher] [copyright] Copyright, 1888, By D APPLETON AND COMPANY. [/copyright] [/title-page] On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 11:43 AM, Karen Lofstrom <klofstrom@gmail.com> wrote:
On Thu, Feb 9, 2012 at 7:48 AM, Lee Passey <lee@novomail.net> wrote:
I'm particularly interested in hearing from Ms. Lofstrom with suggestions about what WEM metadata should be collected, and how it might be structured and retained.
I only know that metadata are important, from dipping into librarian blogs and also from my own struggles to find, retrieve, and store ebooks.