Metadata Reference

Metadata provides information about the book itself: author, publisher, language, and so on. This section provides the complete list of metadata tags.

Note: Most of the metadata elements are optional. The required tags for every package file are: identifier, creator, title, and the xmlns (namespace) attribute. The xmlns attribute identifies the xml namespace where the remaining tags are defined.

Metadata falls into three main categories: numbering, book descriptors, and rights metadata.

  1. The numbering metadata can also be called cataloging information; it includes LOC numbers, ISBNs, and similar identifiers.

  2. The book descriptors include the title, author, subject, language, and other consumer information about the book.

  3. In the current Reader, the rights information is the copyright information. In the future, this will be a more elaborate set of rights information based on the XrML standard. For more information about this standard, see www.xrml.com.

Most metadata—other than the required elements—is not displayed by the Pocket PC version of Reader. In fact, the OEB specification does not require or even expect that the metadata will be rendered by OEB-compliant reading systems. However, the eBook files retain this metadata and it can be used by other applications, such as online bookstores.

Microsoft Reader Versions 1.0 and 1.5 do access and display several metadata elements. Readers can access these elements from the cover page of an eBook by clicking the About this Book listing. Conversion tools automatically generate this listing from the package file as the tools create a Microsoft Reader format file. Future versions of the Reader tools will be able to read and display all of the metadata elements.

Note: All metadata categories in the .opf file are case-sensitive. They must always be presented as <dc:Title></dc:Title> with lower-case dc and an initial capital letter on the name of the metadata element. The dc-metadata elements are defined by the Dublin Core initiative (see http://purl.org/dc/ for more information). The descriptions below are included for convenience, and the Dublin Core’s own definitions take precedence (see http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc2413.txt).

The metadata elements are:


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