Milan: Metadata management to facilitate access to content

Italy - by Italian Publishers Association

15 March 2012 - Linked Heritage presentations in events organised by other institutions

In the digital era, access to content and information is a key issue to ensure the future economic and cultural development of our society. The publishing industry is increasingly moving toward "virtualisation", offering more and more digital content, with libraries and cultural institutions moving into the same direction.

However, these efforts alone are not enough. Without effective digital services to support and facilitate access, digital content risks remaining locked in isolated silos.

That's where metadata and standards can help, as we will see throughout this session.
By retrieving and aggregating quality metadata from various data sources the ARROW system supports libraries in their diligent search and in obtaining from right holders the necessary permission to digitise and make available copyright content.

The "big idea" proposed by the Linked Content Coalition aims at enabling a more effective management of copyright online, by laying the foundations for a more coherent organisation of metadata and rights information through the adoption of cross-media rights communication standards.
And, thanks to effective metadata management along the value chain, the LIA Project will allow blind and visually impaired to find out which e-books on the market meet the accessibility requirements defined at international level.

In Linked Heritage, the inclusion of commercial sector metadata into Europeana aims not only at addressing the problem of the "20th Century Black Hole", but also making visible relationships previously not explicit between contemporary and historical cultural objects using a Linked Data approach.
To summarise: proper identification of "all parts of speech" throughout the networked value chain is essential to prevent digital communication becoming mere chatter.

These examples demonstrate the value of building synergies between industry and cultural institutions, between publishers and libraries. Without synergies there's no access, and without access -  no success.

Chairman: Piero Attanasio (Associazione Italiana Editori)

Speakers:

  • Cristina Mussinelli (AIE, LIA project):
    Metadata management and accessibility of Italian books*
  • Paola Mazzucchi (AIE, Arrow):
    Metadata, rights management and digital libraries*
  • Michael Hopwood (Editeur, Linked Heritage):
    Interoperability between different data sources towards Europeana: the Linked Heritage project
  • Godfrey Rust (Rightscom, Linked Content Coalition):
    New approach to rights information management in the Internet: the Linked Content Coalition
  • Stella Griffith (ISBN International Agency):
    Identifiers in the digital world
* speech in Italian

2.30 pm-6.00pm - SALA LEONARDO
C/O Fondazione Stelline, Corso Magenta, 61, 20123 Milan, Italy