Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
It could of course be, but then it couldn't be read or catalogued by software. Imagine having 10,000 books in your library, but not being able to tell what any book was without opening it and reading the title page. The whole point of having a standard set of metadata, such as the Dublin Core standard that ePub (and Mobi) use is to allow you to catalogue and search your books.
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Actually the original intent was more than this. It was also for the retailer to be able to display the data about the book as well. That is the main reason that there is a summary entry in the metadata which was originally intended to be the description presented by the retailer. I think, today, that this data is provided in a separate document but having it inside the book does have value as well. I remember epub version 1 typically had and used this data. ePub version 1 was used to produce eBookwise, LIT, and MOBI books. It was originally called
OEB or Open EBook standard as described in our wiki.