Tyler Ruse
	VP, Publisher Services
LibreDigital, an RR Donnelley company
ParticipantÕs Interest
RR Donnelley (www.rrdonnelley.com) provides integrated solutions to create, manage, distribute, and help monetize content across print and digital channels. LibreDigital (www.libredigial.com), acquired by RR Donnelley in August 2011, has over a decade of direct experience with helping newspaper, magazine, and book publishers launch and grow digital distribution capabilities. With customers including Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Google, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Scholastic, LibreDigital is uniquely positioned to create value for all participants in the digital supply chain.
LibreDigital is an active participant in the IDPF and the BISG, and has workflow solutions and services that rely on the evolution of standards across content and metadata. LibreDigital has specific interest in the content structure, metadata, and adaptive layout working groups.
Point of View
LibreDigital views EPUB as more than just a vehicle to deliver an ebook through Ð it is a container that can hold multi-platform elements, both in terms of content and metadata. One of the key components of metadata is the container map Ð the information that describes the relationship between all text, page image, and coordinates. From the master container, any package can be derived at scale for any platform, device, or reading technology.
The W3C is the ideal body for driving these standards forward, and ensuring interoperability with existing standards such as HTML5 and CSS3. This is a real need at this time in digital publishing Ð standards that can support consumer interoperability with single source production workflow.
Suggestions
Our agenda and goals will be to advance standards that address two key strategies: included/sidecar metadata (to include bibliographic/sales and structure data) as well as flexible containers that allow automated packaging that supports readers, devices, and web technologies. Metadata standards need to be expanded to manage information beyond product description Ð to include packaging description and interpretation information such as the replica map. While EPUB itself is meant to be a container, it has fallen short becoming an industry solution to a multi-platform and multi-format content and rich data package.