On Monday, March 29th in Chicago, R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company hosted the second meeting of Open eBook members. The purpose of the meeting was to review the progress of the Authoring Group and to discuss future ownership of the Open eBook specification. In advance of this meeting, the Open eBook Authoring Group released an updated draft of the Open eBook specification.

The Open eBook Authoring Group was formed at the end of January, 1999, to continue to work on the Open eBook specification. The new draft, version 0.7, reflects the decisions made by the Open eBook Authoring Group during February and March, 1999. The Authoring Group is composed of representatives of the following companies (in alphabetical order): Adobe, Scholarly Technology Group/Brown University, Exemplary Technologies, Glassbook, Jstream, Librius, Microsoft Corporation, Nokia, NuvoMedia, OverDrive Systems, The Productivity Works, R.R. Donnelly, Softbook Press, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)/U.S. Department of Commerce (facilitator), Vadem, Versaware Technologies, Inc., FX Palo Alto Laboratory, Inc.

The authoring group has made progress in determining the scope and purpose of the Open eBook specification as well as deciding on some technical issues, such as the decision to include table support in the specification. The scope of the specification is to define a format for content publication as well as a requirement for reading systems to accept the Open eBook format and present it properly to the user. The specification is not a format for distribution, compression, encryption, or digital rights.

The purpose of the specification is to:

• Have an immediate, direct positive impact on the creation of a flourishing eBook industry.
• Support consumer confidence in the performance of readers and eBooks.
• Limit burden on content providers (for example, by exploiting legacy data, existing tools and expertise).
• Limit burden on reading system developers.
• Position industry practices to scale to emerging standards.

As with the San Francisco meeting, there was a diverse range of attendees at the meeting. Attendees provided good feedback to the Authoring Group and overall approved of the direction of the Authors and the specification itself.

Regarding future ownership of the specification, an exploratory committee was formed to look into the viability of forming a new eBook standards body. The committee is tasked with making a recommendation to the members at the next meeting. The next meeting will be held in New York City in late May, exact dates TBD. The Authoring Group will again report on its progress and the committee looking into ownership issues will report on its findings and make a recommendation.

To view the current draft of the Open eBook Publication Structure specification, click here. To receive e-mail updates about the Open eBook initiative, send an e-mail message with your contact information (Name, Title, Company, Street, City, State, ZIP, Country if outside U.S., E-mail Address and Phone Number) to all of the following people: