In this installment of the series, we’re going to explore the crucial role of metadata—what it is, why it’s important, and how it’s evolving. I’m grateful to Christine Oliver, emeritus head, Resource Description and Metadata Services at the University of Ottawa Library, for the insights she shared while I was preparing this article.
Given the vast number of books that exist, including the changing landscape of publishers, rights, formats, and versions, poor metadata is one of the biggest hurdles to discoverability for a book. Add to this the rapidly evolving challenges surrounding digital documents. Finding that book, especially if it isn’t hot off the press, or that video from you’re not sure exactly when, suddenly seems exponentially more daunting than finding the proverbial needle in a haystack. That’s why you need metadata.
What is metadata?
Metadata comprises all the information about a book, as opposed to the content within the book. It includes such things as the title, subtitle, author, editor, illustrator, number of pages, ISBN, publisher, series information, size, type of printing and binding, page count, weight, customs classification, author biography, review quotes, table of contents, bibliography or index inclusion, publication date, price, accessibility features, and subject category. That last one is the crucial bit of information for discoverability.
The crisis in Buddhist metadata subject categories
BISAC comprises subject categories from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). The organization was founded in 1975, and BISAC has been the industry standard since 1995. It’s the subject map all publishers that use in metadata in America and is particularly weak in the area of Buddhism. There are more than 150 BISAC codes for Christian topics, from Biblical Commentary/Old Testament/Apocrypha & Deuterocanonical, to Christian Living/Women’s Interests, to Christian Ministry/Preaching.
For Buddhism, there are only seven: General, History, Rituals & Practice, Sacred Writings, Theravada, Tibetan, and Zen, which also shows up in Philosophy. There’s no distinction between books of Buddhism, books about Buddhism, or books influenced by Buddhism. No Mahayana, no ethics, no spiritual care, no engaged Buddhism, no country traditions, no lineages, no interreligious dialogue, and so on.
BISG is open to adding new BISAC subject codes, but no working group of Buddhist publishers, scholars, and/or practitioners has ever convened to petition the organization to do so, although the process is straightforward. Perhaps we’ll be inspired to strike such a committee after this column is published. I, for one, would certainly be willing to serve on it.
In Europe, EDItEUR is the equivalent to the BISG, and their subject categories are known as Thema. There too, Buddhism has only a handful of designations. The same is true of ONIX, the database system that tracks book supply chains from printing plants to bookstores.
Right now, EDitEUR is focused on ebook upgrades for the new European Accessibility Act that came into effect in June 2025. Ebooks in Europe must now conform to its requirements. This will include metadata for such information as whether a book has text-to-speech capability, exists in a braille or large-print edition, and so on. The rollout will begin with new metadata fields for EPUB files, compatibility features on ebook readers, platform readiness, and certified workflows; full implementation will take years. Large publishers will be focusing first on new titles, before assessing whether or not to republish old titles in new formats. There may be an exemption for small and specialist publishers, but nothing has been announced to that effect as of yet. Meanwhile, many multinational publishers are adopting a wait-and-see approach for Title II—the equivalent legislation, coming to the US in 2026. Little has been done here before to incorporate such metadata enhancements and lessons learned from the EAA will be valuable for that to change. It’s yet another disincentive for publishers to invest in ebooks.
Metadata and digital documents
Librarians have been working hard to create a new type of metadata, known as a digital object identifier (DOI), that is a permanent referent for digital objects such as journal articles, PDFs, and other types of files, in the same way that an ISBN identifies a book. Assigning a DOI can be done through doi.org.
In 2005, a consortium of university libraries formed the HathiTrust, with a mission to “contribute to research, scholarship, and the common good by collaboratively collecting, organizing, preserving, communicating, and sharing the record of human knowledge.” (HathiTrust)
While the aims of the organization are laudable, it remains to be seen if it will be able to fulfill its mandate for the long term. This is not the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. Digital repositories are subject to a wide variety of failure risks, as demonstrated by the lack of ability to read old digital data because machine parts for the playback devices are no longer available, many digital newspaper archives that turn out to be out-of-focus and missing pages, or more recently, the gappy nature of the Wayback Machine hosted by the Internet Archive. Furthermore, the HathiTrust is focused on scholarly publishing, not general trade works.
Beyond the print universe
YouTube launched 20 years ago and is now a fixture of modern online life, along with video sites such as Vimeo, TikTok, and a wide array of streaming services.
Buddhist teachers have taken to video in many ways. Their reasons may vary, from preserving, translating, explaining, studying, applying, or reaching out. Unlike teachings in a physical space, those in cyberspace can reach a global audience. Videos can rack up hundreds of thousands of views, if not millions. Channels offer continuity. Additionally, comments offer an interactive dimension that books lack. However, discoverability is still a work in progress. Discoverability of almost all such content is driven by opaque algorithms, advertising revenues, and viral pull.
Similarly, online courses and events have created yet another type of virtual Dharma experience, whether open to all or accessed through a paywall. And then there are virtual worlds like Second Life, where your avatar can interact with an entirely different sort of Buddhist experience.
But here’s the catch: unlike books, ebooks, PDFs, and other text-based documents, which are relatively compact, audio and video files are huge. Most Buddhist publishers lack the infrastructure to host this type of large-file content for long-term accessibility. Video may be expedient in the moment, but how will those teachings and practice instructions be passed along to future generations?
Discoverability, authenticity, and seeds for the future
I think it is fair to say that for most authors of Buddhist books, the goal is not to get rich quick, if at all. As a class of writers, we are motivated by wanting to share the wisdom we have received, forged in practice, with a sense of common purpose in bettering our world.
Putting aside the mercantile aspects of publishing, accommodating ourselves to the constraints of the industry, and humbly recognizing that we are writing for a small but dedicated set of audiences, what are the best ways to reach our potential readers?
In the next, penultimate, instalment of this series, we’ll look at the interbeing of Buddhist teachers and authors, the value of authenticity, and the intersection of Buddhism and community development. Keep your highlighter handy!
See more
Book Industry Study Group
Standards (EDItEUR)
HathiTrust
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So, You Want to Be a Buddhist Author, Eh? Part Three: A Deeper Dive into Buddhism in Print
So, You Want to Be a Buddhist Author, Eh? Part Two: The Changing Nature of Buddhist Practice
So, You Want to be a Buddhist Author, Eh? Part One of A Six-Part Exploration Into the World of Buddhist Publishing
Buddhistdoor View: The Dharma Futurist’s Hope for AI in a World of Suffering
In a World of Human Ignorance, Can Artificial Intelligence Help?
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