Booknet Canada Blog

Archive for the ‘BNC 101’ Category

BNC 101: ISTCs

Thursday, August 12th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

The International Standard Text Code (ISTC) is a numbering system developed to enable the unique identification of textual works. — istc-international.org

An ISTC is a new way of linking different formats of the same book. Unlike an ISBN, it is tied to the book and only the book, not the publisher. A simple example is using an ISTC to link the hardcover, trade paper, mass market, and epub versions of a title. Even though each format would have a different ISBN, they would share a single ISTC.

Why is it important? Because it helps you manage your catalogues and it improves online discoverability for booksellers, consumers, librarians, media, etc. To use BNC CataList, our online catalogue service, as an example, we’re currently limited to relying on ONIX fields (which are often incomplete) or on publishers manually entering information to link a single title to all its other formats. If ISTCs were used throughout the industry, we would be able to automatically link all formats together. So if you were to look up hardcover A, the ISTC would automatically enable CataList to show you that it has the same content as trade paper A, mass market A, and epub A.

This becomes even more important if the title of the text changes, but the text itself remains the same. For example, Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes in Canada and Someone Knows My Name in the United States. Same content, but different titles in the countries. The standard way to link these two titles would be to use an ISTC.

What’s Happening

  • ISTC became an official ISO standard (21047) in March 2009.
  • The International ISTC Agency is currently partnering with Bowker and Nielsen to run a pilot program with a group of publishers, authors, and rights holders.
  • ISTC Search beta site is up and running.

What about Canada?

There currently isn’t very much happening in Canada with ISTCs. Interested? Publishers can always take the lead to make something happen. Contact us if you have any questions.

Links

ISTC International

ISTC Pilot Program

BISAC Identification Committee presentation on ISTCs

ISTC Search - Beta

ONIX for ISTCs

ISO Standard 21047

ISTC Registration Agencies

Tags:
Posted in BNC 101, Standards | 4 Comments »

BNC 101: BISAC Classification

Wednesday, July 21st, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

What are BISAC codes? How should you use them? Where are they used?

Book Industry Standards and Communications (BISAC) Classification Schemes are used to communicate subject information about a book.  This information gets communicated through your ONIX file and is used to help identify where the book should be shelved in a physical store and how it can be found via search or browse in an online store, catalogue or other discovery platform.

BISAC Classification Schemes come in three forms: BISAC Subject Headings, BISAC Merchandising Themes, and BISAC Regional Themes. This post will focus on Subject Headings and Regional Themes.

BISAC Subject Headings

BISAC Subject Headings are the North American standard for describing subject information for your books. Each heading is actually made up of a code and a heading. The code is what is included in the ONIX file and is computer-readable, while the heading is the human-readable version of that code.

Each code is 9-characters long and is made up of 3 letters followed by 6 numbers.

Each heading is broken up into a minimum of 2 and maximum of 4 levels, getting more and more specific as you add levels.

Tip

Always make your codes as specific as possible. Using a general code means that your book will only be found when a reader browses in that general category. Specific codes, on the other hand, will be found in both the specific and general browse results—making it easier for readers to find your books.

Example

FIC000000    FICTION / General
FIC009020    FICTION / Fantasy / Epic

If you have a book that is an epic fantasy fiction, it should be classified as FIC009020    FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. (Side note: this is my favourite BISAC Subject Heading. I like to think it’s telling me the book is epic, instead of being an epic, like “Oh, dude, that fantasy fiction book is epic!”). If it’s only classified as general fiction (FIC000000    FICTION / General), readers who are looking specifically for epic fantasy fiction won’t find it in their browse results. The book will only appear if a reader is looking at browse results for fiction in general. So basically, if your reader knows what they want and you haven’t specified that your book is it, they won’t find it. If a reader were looking for an epic fantasy, why would she search general fiction?

BISAC Regional Themes

BISAC Regional Themes can be used when the subject of a book is tied to a specific region. That way, someone who is looking for all books about Vancouver Island can find all books about Vancouver Island.

These themes are numeric and are broken up into 7 levels:

  • Level 1  - Continents
  • Level 2 - Subcontinents
  • Level 3 - Countries
  • Level 4 - Subcountry regions
  • Level 5 - States, Provinces, Counties
  • Level 6 - City, Town, Area
  • Level 7 - Borough, Neighborhood, District

Example

4.0.2.0.2.2.0 is Vancouver Island, where:

  • Level 1 - Continents = North America (4)
  • Level 2 - Subcontinents = 0
  • Level 3 - Countries = Canada (2)
  • Level 4 - Subcountry regions = 0
  • Level 5 - States, Provinces, Counties = British Columbia (2)
  • Level 6 - City, Town, Area = Vancouver Island(2)
  • Level 7 - Borough, Neighborhood, District = 0

Once again, this information is becoming increasingly important as we discover books digitally—don’t get left behind!

Links

BISG Classification Schemes

Tags: ,
Posted in BNC 101, Biblio, Bookselling, Data Exchange Tips, Education, Metadata, ONIX | 1 Comment »

BNC 101: What is ONIX?

Thursday, June 24th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald


ONIX for Books is an international standard for exchanging important information about books and related products.

ONIX stands for ONline Information eXchange and is an XML-based language used for computer-to-computer communication. Since it is XML-based, it follows the same rules we outlined last week in BNC 101: What is XML?

ONIX doesn’t do anything; instead, it lets you describe what something is.

ONIX is a way of tagging information about your books — such as the ISBN, title, contributor, description, price, and availability. All of this data is needed to support the sale of your books in the supply chain, but it is also becoming more and more visible as websites and catalogues can use this metadata to populate their pages.

Where can you see ONIX?

Look at any major online retailer: all of the information that’s there is from an ONIX file. ONIX is also the information you see about a title in BNC SalesData . Soon, you’ll also be able to see it in BNC CataList and the ACP’s Canadian Bookshelf .

Why is ONIX important?

ONIX is crucial for effective marketing and for communicating with retailers and the customer.

The Sales Side

ONIX is how you transfer all of the information about your books that is needed to support sales. Here, I’m talking about information, such as:

  • Availability
  • Embargo dates
  • Expected shipping dates
  • Prices in different currencies
  • Publication dates
  • Rights information
  • Suppliers for countries and territories

Example: Have you reduced a price? Updating it in your ONIX file lets a retailer know about it and could influence them to increase their order.

The Marketing Side

ONIX is also important for marketing since it allows you to include information that goes beyond the basics, such as:

  • Awards
  • Canadian authorship
  • Descriptions
  • Excerpts
  • First chapters
  • Headlines
  • Initial print runs
  • Links to images, video, and audio
  • More titles from the same author
  • Other formats that the book is available in
  • Promotions information
  • Reviews and endorsements
  • Series and sets
  • Similar titles
  • And the list goes on…

Example: Neglecting to include Candian authorship and other regional information means that your titles will not appear in important discoverability platforms like the Canadian Bookshelf.

Everything you should be including in an ONIX file is information you already have, but for some reason a lot of publishers leave it out.

How can you make your ONIX files better?

  • Don’t make the ONIX file the responsibility of the one techy person in the office. Instead, make it something everyone is responsible for throughout the life cycle of the book. An editor, publicist, rights associate, and sales manager all have different material they can add and update in an ONIX file.
  • Put the information in as you get it instead of creating the ONIX file at the end of the process. You can create the ONIX file at acquisition and fill it out as material comes in.
  • Update your file when something changes and send it to your trading partners again — it should always be up-to-date.
  • Proofread your ONIX files. I’m serious — the sloppy errors that can be found in ONIX files are horrendous.

Some History

ONIX was originally developed in 2000 by the Association of American Publishers and EDItEUR . The Book Industry Study Group (BISG) in the US and Book Industry Communication (BIC) in the UK joined the team after that, and now there are representatives from around the world, including: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Spain, Sweden and the Republic of Korea.

More Information

You can find all of our introductory blog posts in the BNC 101 category .

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in BNC 101, Biblio, BiblioShare, Education, Metadata, ONIX | No Comments »

BNC 101: What is XML?

Thursday, June 17th, 2010 by Meghan MacDonald

What is XML? is the first in a series of BNC 101 blog posts where we’re going to try our best to break down some of the complex tech concepts we talk about all the time into plain language. Wish us luck!

Have an idea for a BNC 101 blog post? Leave a comment below to let us know.

XML is a term that gets thrown around the publishing industry a lot, but what does it actually mean?

First, XML stands for Extensible Markup Language. XML doesn’t do anything; instead, it lets you describe what something is. It is a text format that lets you define information for computer-to-computer communication. Basically, it’s a way to let two programs that speak different languages talk to each other.

I find it’s best to think of XML as content without form: XML is what is in the background describing what everything is, then how it looks is determined by where that information is being used. Some familiar examples of XML-based languages include: XHTML for the web, IDML for InDesign, and ONIX for book information.

Elements

Elements are the building blocks of XML. Think of these elements like descriptors, adjectives attributed to the content. Each bit of content gets described by the element. Elements are made up of opening and closing tags, and the content goes between these tags.

Elements look like this:
<tag>content</tag>

Or, for something publishing-specific, like this:
<Title>Canadian Book Market</Title>

XML allows you to describe infinite amounts of information, but it is the receiving program that decides what to do with it. If an online store receives your file, it will take that title tag and know to post the title as the title on its website. Some programs act on more of the described information than others, so to be on the safe side it’s best to provide more rather than less information to avoid blanks.

For example, if a book has a Canadian author, you would want to add an element that says the author is Canadian. Even if some receivers of the XML file won’t process it some will and it will be to your advantage.

XML always sounds big and scary, but really it’s just another version of something we’ve been doing for years in publishing: marking up documents in the same way you would a manuscript.

The publishing-specific XML language for transferring information about your books is called ONIX. Next week, we’ll post BNC 101: What is ONIX? — your introduction to online information exchange.

You can find all of our introductory blog posts in the BNC 101 category .


Tags: , , ,
Posted in BNC 101, Biblio, Online Marketing | 3 Comments »

Contributors