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ONIX and MARC21

Although ONIX for Books is a trade product information format, the availability of rich metadata from publishers and others has generated considerable interest in the library community. Data from ONIX sources can be used to enhance the content and presentation of library online catalogues, as well as supporting selection and acquisitions. Library representatives play an active part in a number of ONIX national groups.

Several organisations have developed mappings from ONIX to MARC21, the most widely-used format for data exchange among libraries. The most comprehensive recent work in this area has been undertaken by OCLC, and we are very happy to make available through the EDItEUR website a paper by Carol Jean Godby of OCLC’s research staff describing the work and its implications, together with detailed mapping tables in Excel spreadsheet form.

The OCLC work is set in the context of a Metadata Services programme under which publishers’ ONIX files are used to enrich MARC records in the OCLC database with added content, and at the same time MARC elements can be fed back to enhance the usefulness of the publisher’s metadata feed.

The OCLC Research paper, Mapping ONIX to MARC, highlights some of the key differences between the two standards. It describes how the OCLC mappings are constructed; indicates areas where conversion is straightforward and others where the process is more problematic; and acts as an introduction to the mapping tables. The paper also looks to the future, and suggests topics that might be explored in order to make it easier for metadata to be shared between the trade and library communities.

The OCLC ONIX-MARC Mapping, or “crosswalk”, is an Excel spreadsheet workbook with thirteen tables. Table 1 is the master sheet which details all the elements of ONIX for Books, Release 2.1, and shows how they translate into MARC21. Tables 2 to 13 provide a further level of detail for specific elements and code lists, and are referenced from Table 1 where required. While the current published mapping is based on ONIX Release 2.1, and Code Lists Issue 10, its modular structure should make it relatively easy to develop a similar mapping for ONIX Release 3.0.

The Library of Congress also publishes an ONIX-to-MARC21 mapping, based on ONIX Release 2.1, on its website. The Library has for some time been piloting the use of ONIX feeds of advance information from publishers as part of its Cataloging-in-Publication (CIP) programme.