ONIX for Books

Developed and maintained by EDItEUR jointly with Book Industry Communication (UK) and the Book Industry Study Group (US), and with user groups in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and the Republic of Korea.

The ONIX for Books Product Information Message is the international standard for representing and communicating book industry product information in electronic form.

Latest general release: Release 2.1 (revision 02)

For users in most countries, the current release is Release 2.1 revision 02, published in 2004, with some minor revisions to documentation in February 2005.

Special supplementary release: Release 2.1 revision 03

To meet the short-term needs of ONIX implementations in Australia and Spain, ahead of any new general Release, a further minor revision, 03, has been completed in January 2006, and can be downloaded from a separate page. All other users are recommended to continue to work with Release 2.1 revision 02. However, even if you are staying with Revision 02, you may wish to download the Revision 03 documentation package, which includes some more general improvements. Within the documentation, new elements that are applicable only to Revision 03 are clearly marked as such.

To enable all users of ONIX for Books Release 2.1 to continue to use the same master copies of the DTD and Schema for reference and validation purposes, the interactive reference copies on the EDItEUR website - whose locations are documented in Section 5 of the ONIX for Books Release 2.1 XML Message Specification - have been updated to Revision 03. Those who continue to use Revision 02 will notice no change, except that a minor unintended restriction in Group PR.18 has been corrected (if you use Group PR.18, please see the Revision 03 release notes in the Product Record Specification).

Download Release 2.1 documentation and XML DTD, revised Feb. 2005

Download Release 2.1 XML schema

Release 2.1 is an important release – the first release which is the result of feedback from a substantial volume of live usage in several countries – but with full upwards compatibility from Release 2.0. There are many additions to the ONIX for Books Product record format, but senders of ONIX data who do not wish to use the added elements need do nothing more in the first instance than change the release number in the header of their ONIX messages in order to upgrade to Release 2.1.

Following the original issue of Release 2.1 in June 2003, and a number of corrections and minor upgrades made in December 2003 as revision 01, we have made a few further additions, primarily to support the special needs of ONIX implementations in Australia and Canada. These are incorporated into the latest download packages, as revision 02. Most users will be completely unaffected by these additions, and you do NOT need to change the release number in the header of your ONIX messages. The additional level of revision numbering within the release number is used only for purposes of controlling successive minor revisions: see ONIX for Books – Product Information Message – XML Message Specification, Section 5.

New in Release 2.1:

Expanded character set support – direct support for XHTML in designated text elements – new Website composite enables website links to be specified in many different contexts – enhanced Title composite – support for name coding, for personal and corporate names – comprehensive specification of worldwide territorial rights and other non-territorial sales restrictions – new ability to handle re-issues – provision for sending stock information – new elements and code lists to meet the special needs of the US religious book trade – and much else besides.

As always, the changes are spelt out in detail in the introduction to each of the ONIX for Books specification documents.

New users should go straight to Release 2.1. For existing users, Releases 1.1, 1.2, 1.2.1 and 2.0 are still available on the website: Previous releases.

Other ONIX information:: ONIX Tagname Converter; ONIX FAQs Frequently asked questions about ONIX; ONIX / MARC mappings; ONIX_IMPLEMENT The email listserv for ONIX Implementors

Pour les utilisateurs des pays francophones, il existe une traduction en français des ONIX Version 2.1, révision 03 Guidelines, réalisée sous le contrôle du groupe ONIX France et avec le soutien du Cercle de la Librairie (Paris), disponible sur le site: Guide ONIX 2.1 révision 03 (français) (PDF format), Aperçu et Eléments Version 2.1, révision 03 (français) French flag

ONIX standards are maintained by EDItEUR under the direction of an international steering group. US implementation and input to the international steering group are co-ordinated through a committee of the Book Industry Study Group (BISG). UK implementation and input to the international steering group are co-ordinated through the BIC Product Metadata Committee.

If you have comments, questions or suggestions for improvements to ONIX Product Information, please send them to one of the following contacts:

For the USA, Karen Forster, BISG, email karen@bisg.org

For the UK and all other countries, to Brian Green, EDItEUR, email brian@bic.org.uk