Godfrey Rust
Godfrey has over thirty years’ experience of information management and consultancy in media and copyright industries, and continues to play a leading role in the development of identifier and metadata standards in the content industries.
In the 1980s/90s Godfrey was principally responsible for the computerisation of the UK music charts and the establishment of the UK’s National Discography, was Director of Data Services for the UK music collecting societies MCPS and PRS and led early initiatives on global technical collaboration between CISAC societies. He was the instigator of the ISWC (International Standard Musical Work Code), now ISO standard 15707.
Since 1997 he has worked as a consultant data architect (since 2003 as a Director of Rightscom Ltd). He co-authored (with Mark Bide) the <indecs> metadata framework, which has heavily influenced the development of many metadata standards since, and has contributed significantly and at times led work on DOI, DDEX, ONIX, ISTC, ISRC and the RDA/ONIX Framework among others, as well as designing models for a number of commercial implementations in different sectors. He was editor of the Linked Content Coalition’s Rights Reference Model, now being implemented as the data architecture of the UK-based Copyright Hub initiative, and is technical lead of the RDI (Rights Data Integration) project (2014-2016).
Current clients include the Copyright Hub/Digital Catapult, the RDI project and the International DOI Foundation.