Metadata framework for manga: A multi-paradigm metadata description framework for digital comics

Abstract

Manga-a Japanese word meaning comics, cartoons and graphic novels-is very popular in Japan and has been gaining broader recognition in the world. Digital publishing via the Internet and mobile phone networks is gaining wider acceptance, which means both providers and readers of manga need good network-based environments to provide, access and read manga. From this viewpoint, this paper discusses a metadata framework of manga to find, access, use and reuse manga in the networked digital environment. The metadata framework for manga proposed in this paper is defined from three aspects-bibliographic description, structural description, and intellectual entities contained in the manga. We use the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and TV-Anytime as the base schemes for bibliographic description and structural description, respectively. We examine authority and dictionary description schemes for the third aspect. This paper integrates these three base schemes as the metadata schema model for manga. The model proposed in this paper is primarily designed for digital manga because printed manga can be defined as a subset of digital manga.