Time Inc., LexisNexis™, Other Major Publishers and Key Software Vendors Release Metadata Standard

Major information and media companies and leading software vendors in the content and information management space deliver updated version of the PRISM specification for describing content and automating its handling

NEW YORK, NY (February 20, 2002) -- Members of PRISM (Publishing Standards for Industry Standard Metadata), an IDEAlliance Working Group, released the 'last call' draft of the PRISM 1.1 specification February 20 at Seybold NY 2002.

Since the release of the 1.0 specification in April 2001, the PRISM effort has grown as many new publishers, integrators and software vendors have seen the value of the standard as a key aspect of their content and information management strategies. The new version of the specification contains updates and additions that are a result of the specification being tested in both actual production implementations and in pilots. Several of these projects were demonstrated in the IDEAlliance booth #914 at the Seybold Exhibition.

One major application of PRISM is tracking the rights associated with content. Effective and cost-efficient communication of rights is a big challenge for content suppliers and their business partners. Today, just checking the existing rights of individual digital assets is an enormously time consuming manual process. Automating even just this aspect of rights management would provide huge cost savings.

"The PRISM standard holds great potential for easing the exchange of different content types between a variety of content providers and consumers, making new classes of products easier to design and implement." said Bob DuCharme, Consulting Software Engineer for LexisNexis(TM), a division of Reed Elsevier plc providing global information to professionals in the legal, corporate, government and academic markets. "LexisNexis receives vast amounts of information from our more than 30,000 sources, each with its own unique set of licensing conditions and rights restrictions. PRISM offers an opportunity to obtain even more detailed information in a consistent form so that we in turn can deliver better value for both our source providers and our customers," added Chet Ensign, Senior. Director, Architecture & Development Services, LexisNexis.

PRISM (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) is an industry standard that specifies metadata designed to assist in automating, repurposing, archiving, production, aggregation, rights tracking and redistribution of publishable content both within and outside the enterprise among business partners. The standard was originally intended for use in magazine publishing. However, due to its horizontal applicability, it has also gained support from a number of companies who see it as applicable to the publishing-like needs of all organizations.

"PRISM takes a very practical approach to metadata. It builds on the best existing metadata standards, such as the Dublin Core, then extends them to meet the needs our customers tell us are the most important." said Dr. Ron Daniel Jr., chair of the PRISM Working Group and standards architect at Interwoven, Inc. "Interwoven's enterprise content management products have supported the Dublin Core for years. PRISM's advanced capabilities are the perfect complement to the automatic capture and control of metadata offered by our MetaTagger 3.0 categorization product."

"The PRISM Working Group has made great strides for the industry" said David Steinhardt, President and CEO of IDEAlliance. "IDEAlliance continues to support the development of standards for the advancement of cross-industry solutions for all publishing and content-related processes. PRISM 1.1 will be a valuable asset in helping us to reach this goal."

About the PRISM Working Group

PRISM, (Publishing Requirements for Industry Standard Metadata) is a key industry initiative hosted by IDEAlliance and sponsored by a group of companies who have an interest in creating and using a common metadata standard as a basic part of the content infrastructure. The group consists of publishers who are both content suppliers and consumers, software developers and integrators who are involved in content creation, management, aggregation and distribution, whether commercially or within intranet and extranet frameworks. The PRISM Working Group is open to all organizations and includes companies such as 3Path, Inc., Active Data Exchange, Inc., Adobe Systems, Incorporated., Antarcti.ca Systems Inc., Artesia Technologies, Inc., CMP Media, LLC, ContentGuard Inc., Context Media, Inc, Creo Products Inc., Hachette Filipacchi Media, U.S., (HFM), Hearst Magazines, Interwoven, Inc., LexisNexis, a division of Reed Elsevier plc., LingoMotors Inc., The McGraw-Hill Companies, Newsweek, Publishing Connections Inc.(PCI), and Time Inc. To learn more about PRISM and the Working Group, go to www.prismstandard.org.

About IDEAlliance

IDEAlliance (International Digital Enterprise Alliance) is a not-for-profit membership organization. Its mission is to advance user-driven, cross-industry solutions for all publishing and content-related processes by developing standards, fostering business alliances, and identifying best practices. IDEAlliance has been a leader in information technologies since 1966 (founded as Graphic Communications Association) having fostered the development and adoption of standards such as ADIS, GRACoL, ICE, JIFFI, Mail.dat, papiNet, PRISM, PROSE XML, SPACE XML, SGML, and XML. Learn more about IDEAlliance at www.idealliance.org.

Contact

Linda Burman
416-699-7198
linda@laburman.com