ONIX for Books
ONIX is a family of standards for communicating rich metadata about books, serials, and other published media, using common data elements. The ONIX standards include ONIX for Books, ONIX for Serials, and ONIX for Licensing Terms. ONIX for Books is the international standard for communicating book industry product information in electronic form.
What it is
ONIX for Books is the international standard for communicating book industry product information in electronic form. It is the international standard for book trade metadata and allows publishers to distribute information about their books electronically to wholesale and retail booksellers, other publishers, and anyone else involved in the sale of books.
Background
ONIX was developed to solve two key problems:
- Providing booksellers with richer book data online. Research had shown that the more information customers have about a book, the more likely they are to buy it.
- Supplying this metadata in a standard format that could be used by all trading partners across the information chain, regardless of what inhouse systems they used.
In 1999, the American Association of Publishers (AAP) brought together the major publishers, wholesalers, online retailers, and book information services to develop a solution and launched ONIX 1.0 in January 2000.
How it Works
The ONIX standard defines a list of data fields about books and how to send that data in the form of an XML message. ONIX specifies over 200 data elements, each of which is defined in a data dictionary. Some elements are required, e.g. ISBN, author name, and title. Others are optional, e.g. book reviews and cover image. The ONIX DTD provides rules for constructing XML messages, e.g. tag names, numbers, order, and content.
Creating an ONIX message involves allocating the data into ONIX-specified fields and then using XML software and the ONIX DTD to organise and tag the data. A single ONIX message may contain data about one or more books. The XML message is then sent to a bookseller who uses the same tools (XML software and the ONIX DTD) to validate the data. The bookseller then uses the data, e.g. to create web pages.
The Standard
ONIX for Books is developed and maintained by EDItEUR jointly with Book Industry Communication (UK) and the Book Industry Study Group (USA), and with user groups in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, and the Republic of Korea. The ONIX for Books web site gives full details of the standard and the most recent release.
ONIX for Books in the PALS Programmes
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TIME
– This project developed a testbed ‘engine’ to transform metadata from one format to another, via a generic format, to facilitate the cataloguing of e-books. ONIX for Books was one of the input/output formats.
Further Information