Foliointi

Foliointi is a term used in digital publishing and library science to describe a modular approach to organizing multi-page digital documents into discrete units called folios. In a foliointi model, a document is assembled from individual folios that carry content blocks, metadata, and navigational data, enabling independent viewing, citation, and recomposition across platforms. The concept emphasizes interoperability, reusability, and precise page-level reference.

Etymology: The name combines folio, a leaf or page, with a suffix suggesting action or process, reflecting its function as a system for producing and manipulating page-level units. The term emerged in scholarly discourse in the mid-2010s through discussions of edition projects and digital libraries.

Architecture: A foliointi package defines a folio as a portable data object with fields such as id, label, content, media, and metadata, plus relations to predecessor/successor folios and alternative renders. A document is viewed as a sequence of folios connected by navigational links. Implementations typically rely on standard metadata schemas (for example Dublin Core or METS) and may expose IIIF-like image and content requests to clients. A reference implementation might include a folio editor, a repository ingest workflow, and a viewer capable of assembling a document from folios.

Applications and reception: Foliointi has been discussed for digital editions, scholarly journals, museum catalogs, and archival finding aids. Advocates praise its modularity, citation precision, and cross-platform compatibility; critics point to complexity, governance of folio identity, and potential performance trade-offs in large corpora.

Further reading: related concepts include digital folios, IIIF, and modular publishing.