1. Overview of Bowker’s
Metadata Processes
Patricia Payton
Senior Director, Publisher Relations & Content Development for
Bowker
908.219.0241 Patricia.Payton@bowker.com

2. Agenda
• Bowker’s role in the marketplace
– Customer workflows
– Selected client lists
– Bowker products
• Bowker metadata management
– Aggregated and enhanced content
– Value added processes
– Processing of publisher data and audits
– Testing new data feeds
– Publisher outreach priorities
• Next cooperative steps

3. Bowker’s Role in the Marketplace

7. Representative Clients by Market Segment
Publishers: Retailers: Libraries:
Random House Barnes & Noble New York Public
HarperCollins Follett College Brooklyn Public
Hachette Stores Chicago Public
Elsevier Indigo Johns Hopkins University
Macmillan Abebooks.com Harvard
Cengage Hastings Yale
Wiley Sony Princeton
Apple Queens Borough Public
Schools: eBay State of Oklahoma
NYC DOE
web services:
Anthology Blackboard.com
Columbia University New York Times
MIT EdMap

8. Bowker eBook Customers Today
• 45 customers currently purchase eBook data feeds
– Borders, B&N, SWETS, NY Times
• Libraries need central repository to better identify all eContent
• All products incorporate eBook metadata
– Publisher data represents 82% of collection
– Aggregator and conversion house data also stored

9. Search & Discovery Products
Bowker Books In Print®
• > 1,200 retail & library clients (>10K locations) make buying decisions using this online
bibliographic reference tool
• Content is aggregated and standardized
• > 20M records; > 13M “active” book records

10. Search & Discovery Products
Bowker ® Syndetic Solutions
• Library catalog (OPAC) enrichment service
• 2.3B queries/month; >11M content elements; updated weekly
• Cover images, Tables of Contents, Summaries, Reviews, First chapters, Author
notes, Awards, & Knowledge Profiles
• Includes books, videos & music in English, Spanish, German, Swedish & Italian
• Analytics show users search “long tail”—29K hits, most requested title 18

11. Traditional vs. Content Searching
Searches select
metadata fields only
Searches all
available content

12. Search & Discovery Products
Bowker Data Licensing
• Embed data in customer
acquisition & workflow
processes
• 60+ clients including major
retailers, small startups,
eBook platforms, and
search engines
• User controls processing
rules
• Works via pull or push
methods

13. Metadata Management
Customer and
Product Needs
Audits and Aggregated
Gap Filling Metadata
Value Added Enhanced
Processes Content

14. Aggregated & Enhanced Content
Content from the Supply Chain
• Data Feeds – National Libraries, Publishers, & Distributors
• Price & Availability Notifications – Wholesalers
Licensed Content
• Full Text Reviews – PW, LJ and SLJ, NYT (adding UK sources in 2011)
• Review citations – 10 trusted sources Included on > 145K ISBNs
• NY Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times, San Fran. Chronicle, and USA Today
Bowker Created Content
• Author Biographies – > 80,000 authors
• Bestseller lists – 23 sources
• Including New York Times, Los Angeles Times, USA Today, and The Wall Street Journal
• Included on >225K ISBNs even Audio, Video, Print and E-Book
• > 100 Years At a Glance synopses
• Detail listings for PW and NY Times on position and length on list
• Media mentions – 25 sources
• Business Week, Entertainment Weekly, Time, Good Morning America, Oprah, NPR
• Awards – > 400 sources
• Knowledge Profiles – 225K unique across all subjects
• Genre and sub-genre, Author, Title, Characters of book and traits, themes, keyword related
• U.S. titles only

15. Knowledge Profile Creation

16. Value Added Processes
Subject Classification
• Bowker stores and forwards publisher-assigned BISAC subject codes
• Many of Bowker customers use our more specific subject terms
• Bowker’s scheme has > 80K Bowker subject terms compared to BISAC’s 3700 codes
• All Bowker codes are mapped to BISAC and BIC codes for easy updating
Title Linking
• ISBNs of the same intellectual work are linked
• Title, subtitle, and first contributor matches are given a unique title record number
• Unique title record number links all editions to valued-added data such as:
• Bowker subject classifications
• Reviews & review citations
• Awards
• Media mentions
• Bestseller notations
• Chapter excerpts
• Dewey, Library of Congress and British Library classification schemes
• Lexile measures from Metametrics (for children’s books)

17. Linking Enriched Content Across Formats

18. Linking eBook Metadata
• Feature vendor specific information
• Display of agency and institutional pricing

19. Processing of Publisher Data
File Process
• Process goal is 48 hours of receipt
• Automated process pulls from FTP and submits each file
• Data locks down 90 days past publication date
• Only updates to status, returns, and price related fields are allowed
Individual file audit reports run
• Exclude Report--
• ISBN is invalid (e.g., 9 digits, or check-digit will not validate)
• Publisher is not properly linked to current Distributor
• New Imprint for publisher is in file but not in Bowker’s Publisher Authority database
• ISBN status is “No Longer Stocked by Us” or “Refer to another Supplier” (meaning
the supplier of the file no longer carries that ISBN)
• Title Change Report
• Contributor Change Report
Processes vary for print, eBooks, and cover images

20. Database Audit Processes
Daily
• Query/review prices over $400
Weekly
• High profile titles
Monthly
• Un-fielded data
• Upper case titles
• Undefined articles
• Bestselling and classic authors are cleaned
• Bad contributor cleaning
• Research ISBNs with “untitled” titles
• Remove pipe characters, carriage returns and line feeds from titles and contributors
On demand
• Review for timeliness of data
• Bad publisher/imprint symbols

21. Testing Process for New Feeds
Publisher Data Integration Quality Assurance Production
Relations • Map file • In-depth quality • FTP account set up
imprint/publishers review of all titles • Statement of Use
• Validation of
to our database • Compare file to supplied to
ONIX files
• Load data to test data already in BIP publisher
• Check required system • Review • Cover images
data fields • Work excludes completeness of requested
present • Supply audit of data
• Brief quality scan records to QA • For Excel
files, verify scripting
• Determine was correct
quantity of
records supplied
• Write script for
conversion of
Excel files to
ONIX
File can move on File can move on
in process or be in process or be
returned to returned to
publisher 6 weeks publisher
average
wait
1 week on time due 2 weeks on average to complete the testing process
average to files
in queue

22. Publisher Outreach Priorities
Gap filling
• Forthcoming titles (i.e. price, annotation, and cover image at 60 days prior to
publication)
• Validating that older titles (pre 2000) that are still active in our system are still available
• Identifying issues around items lacking prices in our system
• Including items that were cancelled, are not for sale separately, or are no longer
distributed
Establishing eBook metadata feeds
• With publishers, eBook aggregators and distributors
Free full content indexing service
• Whereby Bowker extracts keywords and phrases with relevancy and frequency scores to
embed behind the scenes in products
Understanding the use of ISBNs for digital products

23. Next Cooperative Steps
• Data Submission Guides
• Additional documents available
– Data integrity document (more detail on audit reports and processes)
– Publisher profile data (details on current state of your data)
• Exchange contact details for particular types of issues
• Discuss file format and data fields best for your title set
• Set date for test file submission

24. About Bowker
Bowker is the world's leading provider of bibliographic information
management solutions designed to help
publishers, booksellers, and libraries better serve their customers.
The company is focused on developing various tools and products
that make books easier for people to discover, evaluate, order, and
experience, as well as providing services to publishers that help
them better understand and meet the interests of readers
worldwide. Bowker is an affiliated business of ProQuest and is
headquartered in New Providence, New Jersey, with additional
operations in England and Australia.
For more information, please visit www.bowker.com.
Follow Us On Twitter @DiscoverBowker