how to make your books findable on the web

¿Cómo hacer que sus libros sean

encontrados en la web? Thad McIlroy

TheFutureofPublishing.com San Francisco & Vancouver

Laboratorio digital

Biblioteca Nacional de Colombia April 29, 2015

My Background

Book publisher, author, technologist

30+ years studying the impact of thedigital trends on publishing

Editorial Board for Learned Publishing and Geist

220 articles and 15 books on digitalpublishing

TheFutureofPublishing.com

My New 2015 Books

Outline

National libraries are unique The state of public libraries Bibliographic data standards Problems with today’s standards Findability vs. Discoverability Extending metadata to the web Futures

National Libraries are libraries National Libraries are unique

1. Deep and diversified collections Maps, experimental film & video Tesoros de la Biblioteca

2. A responsibility to researchers 3. A responsibility to the public

To serve as the continuing memory of the Colombian people

Accessible to all

Public libraries in America & Public libraries in Colombia

America In the U.S. 5 states reported library

branch closures in 2014. Funding is flat or down slightly1

Colombia

In Colombia 104 public libraries were built between 2010 and 2014... 44 just in 2014, pushing the total number to 1,404 public libraries in 32 systems2

Santos: “We hope to build a similar number in the second period.”

(For comparison: Canada has 595 library systems and 2996 branches3)

The Delicate Balance Of print and digital

Library customers remain primarily print-oriented

Although a shift in demand is clear Much of the opportunity & the growth is

in digital What is the role of mobile?

Bibliographic Data Standards

Standards, broadly

“The nice thing about standards is that there are so many of them to choose from.”

— Andrew Tanenbaum, 1981

xkcd.com

My Favorite Library Standard

The Dewey Decimal System First published in the United States by

Melvil Dewey in 1876; still in wide use His birth name was Melville Dewey, but

he removed the final “le” to set an example of efficient cataloguing

Shifting Standards: Print

Shifting Standards: Digital

A Universe of Metadata

Problems with Today’s Standards

The aging of existing standards (MARC, AACR2)

Standards move too quickly (RDA, FRBR) Usage drops (ISBN) Projects are abandoned (Europeana’s

REPOX for metadata) Interoperability is lacking

Findability vs. Discoverability

This is an excellent interface to find a book

Findability vs. Discoverability

This is the best interface to discover a book

Extending Metadata to the Web

Schema.org

Encode metadata within a web page to improve the display of search results

A standard created by Google, Yahoo, Bing, Yandex

“There (is) momentum toward the use of schema.org for encoding documents to enhance discoverability.”4

A Simple Metadata Structure

Schema.org instance <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/Book"> <h1 itemprop="name">Avatar (Mysteries of Septagram, #2)</h1> <div itemprop="author" itemscope itemtype=

"http://schema.org.Person"> Author: <span itemprop="name">Paul Bryers</span> (born <span itemprop="birthDate">1945</span>) </div> <span itemprop="genre">Science fiction</span> <img src="http://coverart.oclc.org/ImageWebSvc/oclc/

+-+703315758_140.jpg" itemprop="image"> </div>

Search “Gabriel Garcia Marquez”

“Gabriel Garcia Marquez” snippets

Add “books”

Schema.org Interoperability

JSON-LD provides a shared vocabulary with Schema.org

“Create rich snippets for your website, using a combination of Schema.org and either Microdata or the recently endorsed JSON-LD”6

Endorsing schema.org

Schema.org has become a bit of a success story for structured data on the web... I would have no hesitation in recommending it as a starting point for anyone, in any sector, wanting to share structured data on the web.

— Richard Wallis, OCLC, 12/20/12

A Brief Case Study

Bookbinding Metadata

Search Google

Google links to Internet Archive

Part of the MOMA collection...

But with no link to the source...

Does the value of serendipitous discovery balance against the missing attribution?

Futures

Which metadata will make these books discoverable?

Managing Digital Disruption

Digital is not an event. It’s an ongoing process

Don’t manage technology; manage desired outcomes

How can technology help you reach an outcome?

The Future Library User

Mobile As a Moving Force

The Disruptive Power of Mobile

Cell phones in Africa allowed Africans to skip the landline stage of development and jump right to the digital age5

Will literacy in Colombia be paper-based?

Thank You!

Thad McIlroy The Future of Publishing

thad@thefutureofpublishing.com

Notes and Credits 1. The State of America’s Libraries 2015, ALA 2. El Tiempo, December 9, 2014 3. Leah Jones, January, 2012 4. The Future of Library Resource Discovery, NISO, February

2015 5. Cell Phones in Africa: Communication Lifeline, Pew

Research Center, April 2015 6. http://builtvisible.com/micro-data-schema-org-guide-

generating-rich-snippets/ 7. Cartoon © xkcd.com 8. Bookbinding illustration © frogmoremill.com