Macmillan ACAP Pilot

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
Review of Macmillans ACAP eBook Pilot and
Discussion of Implications for Publishers
NUV/STM Seminar on ACAP Amsterdam, 15 May
2008 Francis Cave on behalf of David
Sommer D.Sommer_at_Macmillan.com Commercial
Director, MPS Technologies
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Agenda
• Review of Macmillans participation in the ACAP
  pilot
• Why we participated?
• What happened?
• What we learnt?
• Discussion - opening it out to general discussion
  of relevant issues for eBook publishers
• Areas to consider
• Impact on workflows, production, editorial,
  technical
• Getting involved - what next?

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
Part 1 Review of Macmillans participation in
the ACAP pilot for eBooks
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Why did Macmillan Participate in the Pilot?
• To experiment and learn
• The only pilot to focus on eBooks universal
  ACAP
• Because we believe that being able to express
  rights to those that want to use content is
  essential to widest possible dissemination of
  content
• Want to work with the search engines

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Our Approach
• Experiment using the BookStore platform an
  eBook platform from MPS Technologies for third
  parties as well as Macmillan publishers
• Created a test site with around 10 books
• Generated a number of test cases including
  allowing and disallowing crawl, index, snippets
  for various book pages
• Worked with Exalead to crawl content and test
  permissions
• Exalead created multiple Bots so we could
  pretend to crawl from multiple services of search
  engines

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
The Plan
ASCII Text From page 201
JPG Image of Page 201
Book andPage LevelMetadata
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
Public
Firewall
Robots.txt with ACAP permissions for unknown or
unauthorized Crawlers
ASCII
ASCII
Robots.txt
ASCII
Robots.txt
ASCII
ASCII
ASCII
Robots.txt for specified crawlers with ACAP
permissions
Known?
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• TestCase 1 Search for term dribbling
• Should include results for Borderlands page15,
  showing snippet
• Should include results for Borderlands page 208,
  but not show snippet
• TestCase 2 Search for term different colours
• Should include results for Taking Comfort page
  93, 134, showing snippet
• Should not include results for Taking Comfort
  page 15
• TestCase 3 Search for term like a gentle
  plateau
• Should not include results for Taking Comfort
  although phrase exists on page 15
• TestCase 4 Search for term run the gamut
• Should include results for North page 16, showing
  snippet
• After the takedown request, North page 16 should
  not be found

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• TestCase 5 Search for term pulled down
• Should include results for Dark Rain page 11, 74,
  220, but not show snippet
• Should not include results from Manuscript
• TestCase 6 Search for term dribbling
• Should not include results from Borderlands

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Some Unusual Aspects of Macmillans Use Cases
• Wanted to use the redirect to hide URL structures
  from public view
• Wanted to use Sitemaps
• Had originally intended to use robots.txt rather
  than metatags to express permissions
• Wanted to provide the ASCII text files to search
  engines rather than the JPG images for
  performance reasons danger of cloaking

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• The Final Pilot Implementation
• Combination of
• Robots.txt specifies the location of sitemaps
• Sitemaps standard site maps file specifying
  metatata and locations
• Metatags specifies page-by-page permissions

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Public robots.txt
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Crawler/service Specificrobots.txt inthis case
for Exalead-bot Sitemapsreference
alsohighlighted
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Metatags at page level showing allows
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Metatags at page level showing disallows
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
The Results
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Conclusions
• Amazing virtual team effort from multiple
  countries, media types and organisations
• Successful for Macmillan - carried out the tests
  we planned to
• There is a lot more to do, especially around
• Integration with Sitemaps
• Grouping of resources (eg chapters not page
  level permissions)
• Notation to simplify ways to express permissions
• Take down requests
• Exalead have been fantastic.
• It would be great to have some of the minor
  searchengines like Google, Yahoo and Microsoft
  moreengaged as they have a lot to contribute and
  gain!

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
ACAP WORKS!
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
Part 2 Discussion - opening it out to general
discussion of relevant issues for eBook
publishers
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Discussion Points
• Levels of granularity, rights and viewing rules
• Workflow and thinking about rights from the start
• ePub and OEB formats (XML eBook formats)
• Robots.txt vs Metatags
• Sitemaps
• Cloaking
• Links with other content types
• Distribution strategy - aggregators
• ACAP who goes first, publishers or search
  engines?
• What happens next how do I get started with
  ACAP?
• Others

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
Levels of Granularity, Identifiers and Rights
FC IFC TOC TOC 1
2 3 4 5
Index Index BC
1 2 3 4
5 6 7 8
9 . 100 101
102
Front Matter
Back Matter
Full Text
Free to All Restricted
Access Viewing Rules Apply Free to
All
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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Rights Example
• Front Matter is free to all
• Back Matter is free to all
• Full Text is available under the following terms
• Maximum of 20 of the book viewable in any
  session
• Only show 3 pages forwards or backwards from
  landing page
• Never show pages 50-85
• Guest Users/Login Required
• Territorial Rights

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot

• Discussion Points
• Levels of granularity and rights and viewing
  rules
• Workflow and thinking about rights from the start
• ePub and OEB formats (XML eBook formats)
• Robots.txt vs Metatags
• Sitemaps
• Cloaking
• Links with other content types
• Distribution strategy - aggregators
• ACAP who goes first, publishers or search
  engines?
• What happens next how do I get started with
  ACAP?

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Macmillan ACAP Pilot
Thank you David Sommer D.Sommer_at_macmillan.com
Commercial Director, MPS Technologies