Good metadata practice for Open Access books | Copim Community
flavoursofopenscience's bookmarks 2025-05-23
Summary:
We revisit the webinar recently organised by the Open Access Book Network (OABN, the Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA), and Thoth Open Metadata.
On March 20, Thoth Open Metadata were delighted to take part in a webinar jointly organised by the Open Access Books Network (OABN) and the Open Institutional Publishing Association (OIPA).
This free webinar offered practical guidance and a forum for sharing good metadata practice for Open Access (OA) books. Featuring a panel of expert speakers, it aimed to help publishers, librarians and other stakeholders in the OA landscape understand this vital piece of the publishing process for OA books: why metadata matters, and how to create and use it most effectively.
Three fifteen-minute talks were given by the panel of speakers, including Graham Bell (Executive Director, EDItEUR), Jeff Edmunds (Digital Access Coordinator, Penn State Libraries), and Hannah Hillen (Metadata & Publisher Outreach, Thoth Open Metadata) and Tobias Steiner (COO, Thoth Open Metadata).
The first speaker was Graham Bell of EDItEUR, a not-for-profit membership organisation that develops, supports and promotes metadata and identification standards for the global book, ebook, audio and serials supply chains. Acknowledged as a centre of expertise on standards and metadata for the industry, it is best known for ONIX for Books, the Thema subject category scheme and EDItX e-commerce messages.
The second speaker was Jeff Edmunds of Penn State University Libraries, where he manages access to the Libraries’ millions of digital resources. He specialises in leveraging metadata to improve the visibility and discoverability of OA ebooks.
The third talk was put together by Hannah Hillen and Tobias Steiner of Thoth Open Metadata, the non-profit, open metadata management and dissemination platform. Following on from the specific focus on ONIX and MARC as two of the key metadata formats in use in book publishing, Hannah spoke about what the team at Thoth has been able to learn about good metadata practice in our work with a variety of publishers of scholarly books; and the journey that metadata takes as it flows through the global book supply chain.