Back to 2001 Press Releases

Boston, MA - April 9, 2001 - Today, the software vendors and content providers of the PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) Working Group announced the release of version 1.0 of the PRISM metadata specification. It provides a metadata vocabulary for print and online publishing.

The specification represents the work of more than 20 content providers and vendors - including Adobe, Quark, Time Inc., Getty Images, Artesia Technologies, Cahners Business Information, Sothebys.com, Banta New Media, IDG Publications, Interwoven, Vignette, Condé Nast and Kinecta. Several vendors serving different parts of the publishing community and other industries are also announcing support for the specification.

"As Time Inc. works to build new systems for presenting, delivering and archiving content, it is critical that we have a metadata standard like PRISM to use as a foundation technology for content management," said Peter Meirs, Director of Alternative Media for Time Inc. "PRISM will facilitate organization, research and re-aggregation of our content both for internal productivity gains and for the development of future business models."

"Our business is vitally dependent on customers being able to find what they need by searching the metadata, including keywords," said Dr. Lisa Frumkes, Linguistic Analyst at Getty Images. "PRISM's extensive subject description capabilities, plus its handling of basic rights and permissions, help support our long-term metadata needs."

Publishers see the effective use of metadata as the key to cutting costs from production operations and growing revenues by leveraging new electronic distribution methods. The new specification represents agreement across the publishing community on the importance of a standard XML metadata vocabulary. Metadata is descriptive information that is machine-usable data added to human-readable content to simplify the automation of routine, but crucial tasks, such as content searching, determining rights ownership and personalization. Providing these capabilities has also captured the interest of organizations outside the publishing domain that are dealing with the issues of creating, managing and distributing large amounts of content.

Software Vendors Pledge Support for New Standard
"Interwoven is solidly supporting the PRISM standard," states Dr. Ron Daniel, Standards Architect at Interwoven and co-chair of the PRISM Working Group. "Delivering the next set of solutions to our customers requires that vendors throughout the content production and distribution process support a common metadata standard as a basic part of the content infrastructure. PRISM is an open effort that our partners - and our competitors - can all support in order to help our mutual customers"

"Content providers have always valued descriptive metadata, perceiving it as a source of competitive advantage," says Linda Burman, Vice President of Strategic Consulting and Standards for Kinecta and founder and co-chair of the PRISM Working Group. "But now, proprietary vocabularies could become a competitive disadvantage. Leading content providers see the need for a common metadata standard to efficiently share content across all their internal properties and with aggregators and re-syndicators. Kinecta sees the PRISM standard as critical for any online business and pledges support for the newest specification."

Other companies both inside and outside the Working Group have also pledged their support. The earliest implementations are available now and more are expected by the end of the calendar year. Find out more at the IDEAlliance booth at the Seybold exhibition and at www.prismstandard.org.

PRISM and Other Related Standards
The PRISM specification builds on existing standards, such as XML, the Dublin Core and RDF. Using that foundation, it adds new elements for discovery, rights management and distribution. The PRISM Working Group is also developing style sheets to make PRISM metadata interoperate with complementary standards such as NITF (News Industry Text Format) and NewsML, both of which are developed by the IPTC (International Press Telecommunications Council).

"We are delighted to see the increasing commercial adoption of the Dublin Core. The use of DC, coupled with extensions for application specific purposes, fits nicely into our notion of modular, extensible metadata that can effectively meet domain specific needs while promoting cross domain interoperability," states Stuart Weibel, founder of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. "Dublin Core has always been envisioned as a foundation on which other others might build. The PRISM specification is a great example of combining real-world business needs with consensus-driven standards."

About PRISM
The Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata (PRISM) standard, an initiative hosted by IDEAlliance, the research arm of the Graphics Communications Association, is a developing framework for the interchange and preservation of publishable content and metadata. PRISM also provides a set of controlled vocabularies with which to describe the content being interchanged. www.prismstandard.org

About IDEAlliance
IDEAlliance, a non-profit organization, provides comprehensive support to working groups engaged in developing industry-specific applications of both vertical and cross-industry open information standards. www.idealliance.org