Meeting minutes
pbelfanti two use cases we discussed
… Susan do you have any on that?
Paul: I think part of the challenge there is how publishered will handle that kind of content
Wolfgang: When you say publishing do you mean an epub, print book or website. In my estimation a website would be best. You could use javascript and other existing web technologies and self-publish
Paul: Is there some requirement, or real life practicality in being able to publish under the umbrella of an organization that validates/legitimizes the publications
JF I'd like to understand what we are talking about annotations, are these knock-on additions to an existing book...
Wolfgang mentioned security issues with external resources, is current metadata already doing this? Where would [insert tech name here] that go?...
The use case that Susan has brought forward is that annotation?
James traditional publishers like our books. An interactive game, the best we could do is add it to courseware. This will be a wider educational issue. It will probably be solved by a younger upstart company
Paul we have this tension between traditional publishing that has legitimacy, and someone doing something new and exciting. I think you are right, James, there is some publisher who will emerge and say
… traditional publishers aren't getting this done, and with the quality of things they publish will achieve legitimacy
Paul: Susan, it looks like this is a fertile area for discussion, please make a use case for the next meeting
<pbelfanti> Higher Education no longer revolves around books but courses. Books (often in the EPUB format) are available to students, but the primary UI is courses. This means that pieces of text are offered to the student along with video, test questions, and other interactive elements. The thing called a “course” is not standardized. It might just be something that lists what the course contains. We might consider working with 1EdTech (formerly IMS Global
Paul: The next use case we have to discuss is from Tzviya and is in rough shape
[text-of-Tzviyas-uc]
Wolfgang: I have consulted about information archetecture standards [stands] Epub is basically for reading, not interacting. We can begin with basic epub and expand to more interactive content with javascript and other tools
JF: If the problem is integrating ebooks into courseware, one of the things that courseware is looking for SCORM compliant. Are we looking to make ebooks compliant so that they can be used in courseware?
JF: The first use case that Susan brought looks like a policy, not a technology problem
Paul: We are looking at things outside the EPUB model. That's where courseware comes in. Courseware is usually broken into pieces. There is often a link to snippets for review. I guess what we are talking about is that there are clear guidelines
Paul: What are the more definitive and ideal standards?
Paul: The capabilities exist. Most publishers I've worked for have their own white label standards/platforms but usually end up integrating with an institution
Paul: that is usually a painful process, we are trying to come up with standards to make that better
… the purpose of this task force is to surface problems that will allow us to improve the educational experience accross the web. If these issues have enough "legs" it can be presented to the publishing group as a whole...
and eventually floated up to other groups in the W3C
JF: Thank you for the overview. Having the problem clearly defined is important...
If we are talking about derivative work, we could use existing metadata to tie different projects together
JF: From my perspective, I am looking at technology solutions
Paul: The purpose of this task force, a sub group of the Publishing Community group— is to try to answer "What does Education want from the web"...
That can mean a couple of things, there is a problem, or an aspiration. Between those two buckets, we are trying to find the gaps. We are not limited to epub, but could address publishing in general...
In some cases, these use cases may go nowhere. In some cases it may turn out there is a solution that is not well known and documenting or socializing will solve it...
In some cases there is an aspiration that may be best forwarded to another working group within the w3c
JF: This looks like a two pronged project- one— getting authority for self-published works— and that can be added to the metadata
JF: In epub the accessibility space has room for certification...
all of the information for accessibility is captured in metadata. Do we have metadata mechanism for proving that a work has been reviewed by an authority?
sue-neu: I wasn't thinking about adding legitimacy to self-published works, but rather developing the technologies for traditional academic publishers to publish non-traditional projects under their own imprint
Paul: At the core of the use case is that current technology does not support all the types of alternative projects
JF: We can already express that kind of information and put that information in the metadata. It can be expressed to library systems. Is the issue that library systems aren't sophisticated enough to capture the metadata
JF: I know other groups are working on that. The solution is that the information is bound to the publication by the metadata
Paul: You're bringing up valid points, John. What I hear is that this librarian is expressing that there are obstacles perceived. You may be right, perhaps the solution already exists. We need to dig further into the use cases to be sure this is a real problem
Paul: In some cases, scholarly publishing doesn't have what they need to publish in a peer-reviewed environment.
Sue-neu: I didn't present a complete use case but was hoping to get the groups help finding the user for the use case
JF: You have at least two use cases here, the scholar and the press. Who are the players in this case? We need to identify if this is a technology problem or a social/communication problem?...
the biggest problem in the accessibility space is that we have the capabilites but people don't know what they don't know...
At the end of the day, we have technology solutions for a lot of these problems. But to Wolfgang's point, sometimes there are external concerns like privacy
Wolfgang: It might also be a question of tooling and costs. There is a lot of technology out there. If you are a publisher and only get one or two of these special dissertations a year...
You need the expertise, you need to build up a line of production. You might have it, you might not.
… but you incur a cost to tool up. How many will I sell? These are hard economic facts. If 95% of those publications don't involve that, why should I do it?
<JF> @wolfgang I would classify all of your questions/comments as "Policy" concerns
Paul: those could be policy concerns, but they could have a capability component
JF: We have already done this with the accessibility group— do I really need to do this?
JF: Small Mom & Pop publishers should have some kind of expert, large publishers are likely to have people in house.
JF: Maybe we should start laying out all of the problems as "policy" or "technology" problems
<JF> john@foliot.ca
Paul: This has been a good discussion. We have gotten some input and guidance on the use cases
s /publishered /publishers