ONIX Books Code Lists, Issue 9
From
Release 2.1 of ONIX
for Books, the ONIX Code Lists are being maintained separately from any
of the individual ONIX message formats.
A single
set of Code Lists underpins all ONIX message formats. Some
lists may be used in several, or all, of the formats (eg language and
country codes). Some may be used in only one format. They are all
maintained as
part of a single set of lists, in which each list has a unique number.
(The code list number carries no significance: it is simply a
“dumb” reference number.) However, for practical
reasons, code list files extracted from this master set are
published separately for ONIX for Books and ONIX for Serials
Issues
of the ONIX Books Code
Lists are independent of the publication of new releases of
the ONIX Books Product Information message formats. Code List
Issues are numbered
sequentially 1, 2, 3 etc. The set of Code Lists released in April 2003
was designated Issue 1.The
current set of Code Lists, dated April 2009, is Issue 9.
Frequency
of issues
New
issues of the ONIX Books code lists have normally appeared at intervals
of between six months and one year. Issue 9 is unique in that
it covers both changes that users have requested for immediate
application in Release 2.1 and a substantial number of new lists that
are for use only in ONIX Books Release 3.0. We
expect that there will be a further Issue 10, probably no later than
June, to complete the new lists for Release 3.0.
Changes
in
Issue 9 for Release 2.1
You
can download here a PDF
file listing the
changes made in Issue 9 that apply to ONIX Books Release 2.1.
Links
between format specifications and Code Lists
Code values are not now included as part of the format specifications.
Instead, each specification of a coded data element includes a
hyperlink to the relevant code list, and a set of HTML files carrying
the latest issue of the code lists is part of the specification
package. This approach can be seen in the download
package for ONIX
for
Books Release 2.1, revision 02
which includes the HTML files
for the latest issue of the code lists. In the linked HTML files, code
lists and individual codes
which are new (or
whose status has been
changed from active to “deprecated”) in
the latest issue are highlighted
in red. PDF
file
for viewing or printing
ONIX
Books Code
Lists Issue 9 for Release 2.1 is available as a
PDF file
for
viewing or downloading. In this file, newly added codes, and any
existing entries where the wording has been clarified,
are highlighted in blue. Issue 9 also includes new lists and values
that have been added for Release 3.0 only. To avoid possible
confusion, Release 3.0 codes are not included in this eye-readable
document, except in a very few cases where they are also visible in
Release 2.1 schemas. They are included in the comma-delimited
and XML files which can be downloaded further down this page. Code
list
files for loading into local systems
Comma-delimited
file
You can download the comma-delimited
file here. The file is encoded
using ISO 8859 Part 1, also known as
the ‘Latin 1’ or ‘Western
European’ character
set, which is compatible with most North American and Western European
systems using versions of the Microsoft Windows operating system, and
is compatible with all web browsers. Alternative versions using Unicode
or character sets used by specific computer platforms or operating
systems may be available on request – please email us
The
code lists are
presented in numerical order. Each line in the file represents a code
list entry. Each line has five fields, in the sequence as given
below: - Code list number
- Code
value
- Description – a short text
statement of the meaning of the code
- Notes
– a longer definition where required
- Issue
number – the code list in which the code was added, or in
which the status of the code was changed. The issue number is
"0" for all codes issued prior to the present release, and "1" for all
codes new in this release.
- Note
that in previous issues of the code lists the CSV file has had a line
sequence number against each line in the list, as the second element of
the line. For reasons related to the way in which the lists are now
being maintained, this numbering has been deleted from Isuue 6 and
subsequent issues. If this causes a problem for your
established processes please email
us.
XML
code list
file
You can download the XML
file here.
The
file is encoded using single-octet Unicode (UTF-8 – the
default
encoding for XML documents). Alternative versions may be
available
on request – please email
us.
The format is as follows. The
top-level tag is <ONIXCodeTable>.
The
document contains
a sequence of composite elements<CodeList>,
each of
which
contains the data elements <CodeListNumber>,
<CodeListDescription>and
<IssueNumber>,
and a
sequence of composite
elements <Code>.
Each
composite element <Code>contains
the
data
elements <CodeNumber>, <CodeValue>,
<CodeDescription>,
<CodeNotes>
and <IssueNumber>.
Here is a sample: <?xml version="1.0"
encoding="utf-8"?>
<ONIXCodeTable>
<CodeList>
<CodeListNumber>1</CodeListNumber>
<CodeListDescription>Notification
or update type
code</CodeListDescription>
<IssueNumber>0</IssueNumber>
<Code>
<CodeNumber>1</CodeNumber>
<CodeValue>01</CodeValue>
<CodeDescription>Early
notification</CodeDescription>
<CodeNotes>Use
for a complete record issued earlier
than approximately six months before
publication.</CodeNotes>
<IssueNumber>0</IssueNumber>
</Code>
... The
content of a list in the
XML format
differs in some respects from that of the CSV format. In the XML
format, each list opens with the list number, a description of the
list, and an issue number for the list as a whole, which specifies the
issue when the list was added or last changed (in addition to the issue
number against each individual code value). ONIX
Listes de Codes 7:
ONIX
Code Lists Issue 7 in French,
translated by the
French ONIX Group 
ONIX
Codelisten Ausgabe 2:ONIX
Code Lists Issue 2
in German, translated by the German-language
ONIX
Group  |