ONIX 3.0 Raises Standard for Ebook Metadata
Third, there's a large group of controlled vocabularies -- "codelists" in ONIX parlance -- describing aspects like the role of a contributor ("A01" above means "written by"), or the physical or electronic form of a product, in a language-independent way. So a code like BB for the physical form of a book means "hardcover"in U.S. English, "hardback" in U.K. English, but equally it means gebundene Ausgabe in German, and can be understood even if the entire ONIX message is in Swedish like the extract above. This language independence has contributed greatly to the international adoption of ONIX, as has the fact that it is a relatively open standard and free of charge for anyone to use.
ONIX 2.1 vs. ONIX 3.0
ONIX 2.1 and ONIX 3.0 are different, but many overestimate the degree of that difference. The underlying abstract view has not changed. Most codelists are shared between the versions. The update doesn't necessarily imply radical change in any application or database used to manage product metadata. And while the extract above is ONIX 3.0, anyone familiar with ONIX 2.1 might not even have noticed the differences. There are two differences visible in the example above: used to be , and in 2.1, it would have occurred after the name rather than before. But not all the differences are as trivial as this, and for an organization using ONIX, there are clearly some development costs associated with migrating to the newer version.
- Places:
- Europe
- North America