PRISM 1.0 Specifications
Previous versions of the PRISM Specification include
PRISM 1.2 (2005), PRISM 1.2 (2004) PRISM 1.1 (2002) and PRISM 1.0 (2001)
A second specification, the PRISM Aggregator DTD provides
standard format for publishers to use for delivery of
content to web sites and to aggregators and syndicators.
This specification is an XML DTD that provides a simple,
flexible model for transmitting content and PRISM metadata
for magazine and journal articles.
PRISM Specification (Version
1.3)
Overview
The Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard
Metadata (PRISM) Specification defines an XML metadata
vocabulary for syndicating, aggregating, post-processing
and multi-purposing magazine, news, catalog, book, and
mainstream journal content. PRISM provides a framework
for the interchange and preservation of content and
metadata, a collection of elements to describe that
content, and a set of controlled vocabularies listing
the values for those elements.
Metadata is an exceedingly broad category of information
covering everything from an article's country of origin
to the fonts used in its layout. The scope of the PRISM
Specification was driven by the needs of publishers
to receive, track, and deliver multi-part content. The
focus is on additional uses for the content, so metadata
concerning the content's appearance is outside PRISM's
scope. The working group focused on metadata for:
- General-purpose description of resources as a whole
- Specification of a resource’s relationships
to other resources
- Definition of intellectual property rights and permissions
- Expressing inline metadata (that is, markup within
the resource itself).
The Business Case
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 PRISM 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.
According to Peter Meirs, Director of Alternative Media
for Time Inc., "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. 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."
The PRISM Aggregator DTD
(Version 1.1)
Overview
The PRISM Aggregator DTD
specifies a standard format for publishers to use for
delivery of content to web sites and to aggregators
and syndicators. It is an XML DTD that provides a simple,
flexible model for transmitting content and PRISM metadata.
The PRISM Specification defines a collection of metadata
elements for common publishing needs. But to apply them
in specific situations, such as for delivery of content
to web sites and secondary licensing partners, it is
necessary to define formats, typically through a series
of DTDs (Document Type Definitions), that combine PRISM
metadata with content markup to support those specific
processing objectives. The PRISM Aggregator Message
DTD is such a specific standard.
The Aggregator XML tag set has been designed to meet
the business requirements of the members of the Working
Group. After examining numerous samples from every publisher,
the group did an extensive review of all requirements
and how an aggregator tag set could address them. See
the press release for more details.
The Business Case
Following are some of the benefits of the Aggregator
DTD. The Guide to the PRISM Aggregator DTD explains
these benefits in more detail.
- 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 and makes
it possible to automate these processes.
- The value and accessibility of the content will
be increased because time to market is reduced by
the use of a single format for all organizations.
- 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.
- Aggregators manage content from a large numbers
of sources. By providing a common metadata standard,
PRISM helps everyone in the electronic content business
track, use and re-use their content.
- Providing content encoded in XML enhances the content’s
value because it makes it possible to re-purpose it.
For instance:
- Information marked up as tables is now accessible
as data.
- In-line XML markup lets you identify names,
key phrases and other important data elements
such as organizations. This ability greatly improves
search and display flexibility and increases the
possibilities for new products.
- Standardization of the use of special characters
gives you wider access to more scientific symbols
and foreign characters. Furthermore, they can
be handled automatically.
All of these capabilities combine to let you use your
content on a wider variety of output media and products,
getting more value from your information assets.
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