There was a time, not long ago, when publishers’ content moved along a straight and narrow path that reached a dead end at the printing press. But with the explosive development of the Internet, a industry vision emerged where digital content files could be archived, managed and automatically accessed for use and reuse in multiple formats. Instead of content taking a one-way trip to the printed page, content could be sent in multiple directions at once—not only to various consumer devices, but to aggregators as well, who will repackage, reposition and re-purpose the content.

Industry leaders soon realized that tracking content through its life-cycle—the creation, use, aggregation, syndication and reuse of digital assets—would be a costly, ad-hoc endeavor unless standards were established and followed. Only by reaching an industry agreement about the vocabularies and definitions that determine how an asset is described, exchanged, and displayed could automated and efficient tools and processes be developed.

The PRISM Working Group was established in 1999 by a group of companies primarily involved in the production of serial and web-based editorial content who recognized the value of content standards. This group included publishers, other rights holders, systems integrators, software developers and content aggregators who faced common content application challenges such as re-use of content in multiple media types, rights and contract management, better access to content archives, and faster, less expensive exchange and integration of disparate sets of content across the enterprise and with outside business partners. The representatives of these companies believed that developing and adopting a standard set of XML metadata would assist them in managing and automating their labor-intensive content workflow processes.

The result of this collaboration is the PRISM specification. The PRISM specification defines a standard for describing, exchanging, and reusing content in both print and electronic publishing contexts. The Working Group released Version 1.0 of the PRISM specification in April of 2001. Version 1.1 was released a year later. Most recently, in 2003, the PRISM Working Group developed a standard XML tag set that combines PRISM metadata with content markup to support the automated transmission of content from publishers to content aggregators/syndicators.

So why was the development of PRISM so important to these industry leaders? What value did this technology specification provide?

• The use of a single, industry-standard format for extraction and acquisition reduces the errors and costs of tracking and deploying multiple formats to communicate with multiple business partners.
• The use of a single format for all organizations speeds the processing of content and speeds the integration of new business partners into your workflow. If a new partner is using a format that you can already handle, little if any process change is necessary to transmit content between you. The value and accessibility of the content will be increased because time to market is reduced.
• The use of a common industry format reduces the barrier to entry for all publishers and content aggregators. This is especially valuable for smaller organizations.