A guide to metadata by the
Metadata Advisory Group of the MIT Libraries ONIX
ONline Information eXchange
Graphic representation of ONIX message series, which is one
of the four series types that are part of the ONIX metadata
schema.
Objective/Definition:
According to Editeur, the group responsible for the maintenance
of the ONIX standard, “ONIX is the international standard
for representing book, serial, and video product information
in electronic form.” [1]
Editeur objectives are:
• To cover books and, progressively, other media.
• To meet the practical information needs of all sectors
of the industry, including in particular, but not limited
to, publishers and online vendors.
• To provide structures which can reflect the realities
of national and international rights, distribution, pricing
and availability.
• To be usable in a multilingual marketplace.
• To incorporate the core content which has been specified
in national initiatives such as BIC Basic and AAP’s
ONIX project.
• Finally, to build where possible on what EDItEUR’s
EPICS and the <indecs> Project had already done to establish
sound models for metadata in a future electronic environment.
In a recent press release from the International DOI Foundation
stated that one of the key aims of ONIX “is to provide
a format for delivery structured data, and to that end ONIX
has a much more highly structured model for information than
other descriptive metadata formats, such as Dublin Core.”
[ 2]
Constituency:
ONIX is maintained cooperatively by three bodies:
1. EDITEAR : an international group, which coordinates standards
for electronic commerce. http://www.editeur.org/onix.html
2. Book Industry Communications (BIC) : a London based organization
charged with exploring electronic data interchange. http://www.bic.org.uk/
3. Book Industry Study Group (BISG) : a non-profit association
stationed in New York, which develops technical standards for
the book world. http://www.bisg.org/
Who uses ONIX?
Many major online book traders use ONIX as their standard.
Among the many groups involved with ONIX Amazon played an
intricate role in its initial use. Below find a listing of
some groups that use ONIX:
American Booksellers Association
American BookSense Website
Association of American Publishers
Association of American University Presses
American Wholesale Booksellers Association
Amazon.com
Barker & Taylor
Barnes & Noble
Bowker
Follet
Harcourt
HarpersCollins
Houghton Mifflin
Ingram Books Company
Login Brothers
McGraw-Hill
MUZE
National Book Network
Net read
Paladin Press
Pearson
Princeton University Press
Random House, Inc.
Reiter’s
Time Warner Publishing
John Wiley & Sons
Yale University Press
Evolution:
• The name ONIX and
the idea of a standard aimed primarily at enabling publishers
to supply “rich” product information to Internet
booksellers originated with a meeting in July 1999 organized
by the Association of American Publishers (AAP) and attended
by over sixty publishers, online booksellers, and others.
• As a result of that meeting, the AAP funded and managed
a fast-track project during the last quarter of 1999, which
led to the publication of ONIX Version 1 in January
2000.
• Much of ONIX is based on a pre-existing standard called
EPICS (EDITEUR Product Information Communication Standards).
• Originally designed with 2 levels. Level 1 was conceived
as a simplified subset, which would be sufficient to meet
the needs of many, particularly smaller, book publishers.
• The overwhelming majority of implementations have
been at the level 2; the ONIX development team decided not
to further develop level 1.
• Latest release is version 2.0, which introduces coverage
of ebooks; adds many new elements and codes which have been
requested by user groups; and makes some structural changes
which will enable coverage to be extended more widely to non-book
media, and facilitate the structured description of product
content, including book tables of contents. ONIX E-publication
Type codes (available at http://www.editeur.org/onix.html)
are an essential part of the description of ebooks. Because
of the speed of change in this area, they are being maintained
and updated separately from the rest of Release 2.0. Prerequisites:
• Understanding of
XML data type
Content:
The ONIX documentation type definition
(DTD) contains over 230 data elements and composite elements,
organized into 38 groups: 25 of which relate to product records,
6 to main series records and 7 to subseries records.
ONIX defines optional and mandatory data element for a wide
range of media including : cover images, author photos, audio
files, video, ect.
ONIX is written using XML tags that refer to the ONIX Documentation
Type Definition (DTD). The DTD defines the required an optional
elements, repeatability and ordering of elements.
Elements:
Message Header: M.*Sender, addressee, default information.
Product Record:
PR.1.* Record Reference number, type and source.
PR.2.* Product Numbers
PR.3.* Product Form
PR.4.* Epublication Detail
PR.5.* Series
PR.6.* Set
PR.7.* Title
PR.8.* Authorship
PR.9.* Conference
PR.10.* Edition
PR.11.* Language
PR.12.* Extents and Other Content
PR.13.* Subject
PR.14.* Audience
PR.15.* Descriptions and Other Supporting Text
PR.16.* Links to Image/Audio/Video files
PR.17.* Prizes
PR.18.* Content Items
PR.19.* Publisher
PR.20.* Publishing Dates
PR.21.* Territorial Rights
PR.22.* Dimensions
PR.23.* Related Products
PR.24.* Supplier and Trade Data
PR.25.* Sales and Promotion Information
Product Record Example
Main Series
MS.1 Record Reference Number, Type and Source
MS.2 Main Series Identifiers
MS.3 Main Series Title
MS.4 Main Series Contributors
MS.5 Main Series Text Elements
MS.5 Subordinate Entries
Main Series Example
Subseries record:
SS.1 Record Reference number, type and source
SS.2 Subseries Identifiers
SS.3 Subseries Volume or Part Detail
SS.4 Subseries Title
SS.5 Subseries Contributors
SS.6 Subseries Text Elements
Subseries Record Example:
Experts:
• Carol Risher of AAP steered the original ONIX project
from its inception to its successfulconclusion, with Evelyn
Sasmor of McGraw-Hill as Chair of the AAP’s ONIX Committee.
Evelyn Sasmor now chairs the US ONIX International Policy
Committee.
• Sandy Paul, as Managing Agent for BISG, coordinated
US implementation of ONIX International until April 2001,
when Frank Daly, Executive Director of BISG, took over this
responsibility.
• Internationally, the development of ONIX is the responsibility
of the EDItEUR ONIXInternational Steering Committee, which
is chaired by Michael Holdsworth of CambridgeUniversity Press.
• Chris Burns, of Christopher Burns Inc. (http://www.cburns.com/),
publishing and information industry consultant, developed
the ONIX Version 1 Guidelines for Information Exchange.
• David Martin, consultant to BIC and EDItEUR, was
principally responsible for preparing the documents released
initially as ONIX International and now re-titled ONIX Product
Information Standards, since it has become clear that the
scope of ONIX is no longer limited to book trade product information.
• Francis Cave, of Francis Cave Digital Publishing
(http://www.franciscave.com), developed and maintains the
XML DTD which defines the ONIX XML Product Information message.
List Serves:
ONIX Implementation (http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ONIX_IMPLEMENT/join)
Project Examples:
http://www.amazon.com
http://www.barnesandnoble.com
Tutorials:
ONIX Implementation Tutorial: http://abiblion.com/onixtutorial/
This tutorial is intended to help programmers working with
book professionals to implement the ONIX Product Information
Standards <http://www.editeur.org/onix.html>.
It includes sample ONIX files, detailed directions and sample
source code in several popular server-side programming languages.
Reading List/Background Information:
Association for Library Collections and Technical Services
(A division of the American Library Association) Cataloging
and Classification Section, Committee on Cataloging: “Description
and Access Task Force on ONIX International Interim Report”,
June 7, 2001, http://www.ala.org/alcts/organization/ccs/ccda/tf-onix2.html
Graphical representation of ONIX DTD is available from http://www.editeur.org/onixfiles2.0/onixfiles.html.
IDF Press Release, EDITEUR and IDF announce collaboration
and work towards ONIX and DOI harmonization, March 18, 2002,
http://www.doi.org/news/020319-Editeur.org
Forum for Metadata Schema Implementers, Watch Report #1,
http://www.schemas-forum.org/metadata-watch/first/section3.2.html
Medeiros N., Metadata for e-commerce: the ONIX International
standard, OCLC Systems & Services, MCB University Press,
29 August 2001, vol. 17, no. 3, pp. 114-117(4)
Needleman M.H. ONIX (Online Information Exchange)
Serials Review, December 2001, vol. 27, no. 3, pp. 102-104(3)
Netread, ONIX , 2000 http://www.netread.com/onix
ONIX International homepage (Developed and
maintained by EDItEUR jointly with Book Industry Communication
and the Book Industry Study Group) http://www.editeur.org/onix.html
PowerPoint presentations on ONIX International<http://www.editeur.org/onix.html>
http://www.bic.org.uk/onixsem.html
Links to 7 presentations (PowerPoint, Word, or .pdf) presented
at the seminar ONIX
International:How Better Product Information Sells More Books
(London, 14 November
2000):
• What is ONIX (David Martin)
* Amazon and ONIX (Mo Jacobs)
* Whitaker and ONIX (Michael Healy)
* BookData and ONIX (Peter Mathews)
* Cambridge University Press and ONIX
* Harper Collins and ONIX (Graham Bell)
* Libraries and ONIX (Alan Danskin)
Crosswalks:
ONIX to MARC 21 Mapping (Network Development and MARC Standards
Office, Library of Congress)
http://lcweb.loc.gov/marc/onix2marc.html
Includes mapping table in ONIX data element order, and record
builder for creating MARC 21 records from ONIX data.
ONIX to UNIMARC Mapping (by Alan Danskin of The British Library)
http://www.editeur.org/onixmarc.html
ONIX / MARC21 Mapping by Bob Pearson of OCLC http://www.editeur.org/ONIX_MARC_Mapping_External.doc
Tools:
Onix Full Text Indexing and Retrieval Toolkit
Lextek International
202 N. 700 E.
Provo, UT 84606
801.375.8332 (Voice)
801.373.5342 (Fax)
sales@Lextek.com (EMail)(http://www.lextek.com/onix/#license)
[1] Editeur, ONIX Product Information Release
2.0 Overview and summary List of Data Elements, Release 2.0
8/2002, pg 2
[2] International DOI Foundation Press Release,
EDITEUR and IDF announce collaboration and work towards ONIX
and DOI harmonization, March 18, 2002, http://www.doi.org/news/020319-editeur.html.
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