Standards for electronic trading and product metadata

David MartinITALE Seminar, Milan 1 June 2004

EDItEUR

• Founded 1992 in Amsterdam as a European book trade EDI group

• Sponsored by the European federations of publisher, bookseller and library associations

• Now 90 members from 17 countries, including Australia, Canada, Japan, S Africa, USA

• Interests extending beyond EDI and book supply, to embrace all forms of electronic communication in the book and serials sectors

• An “umbrella” group, secretariat in London

What is EDItEUR?

• USA: BISAC (part of Book Industry Study Group), NISO (National Information Standards Organization)

• UK: BIC (Book Industry Communication)

• Other national groups, generally with interests in a particular part of EDItEUR’s work, such as ONIX: most countries do not have groups like BIC and BISAC

EDItEUR partners

• Numbering agencies: EAN International, ISBN, ISSN

• International DOI Foundation (IDF)

• Various ISO groups

• ICEDIS: International Committee on EDI for Serials (managed by EDItEUR)

• IFLA

EDItEUR partners - international

• EDIFACT trading message formats

• XML trading message formats

• ONIX product information standards

EDItEUR standards

• EDILIBE EU project on EDI for international library supply

• Participants from Germany, Italy, Netherlands, France, Spain, UK

• EDItEUR worked with EDILIBE and EAN International to define implementation guidelines for “EANCOM” EDIFACT messages

• Led to publication of a first edition of EDItEUR EDI guidelines in 1995

EDIFACT: how it started

• 1997: new release of EANCOM EDIFACT formats, with significant new features, and a promise of long-term stability

• EDItEUR revised, extended and re-issued its implementation guidelines

• Since then, all EDItEUR EDIFACT formats are based on EANCOM 1997 edition

EDIFACT: the next stage

• Quotes: notifications of new titles

• Orders

• Order response: for initial response and status reports

• Order change: changes or cancellations

• Order status enquiry: “chasers” or claims

• Invoice: also used as despatch notification and credit note

EDIFACT: library book supply

• In the UK, a wide variety of applications for Quotes, apart from new title notification

• With increased use of web ordering or other direct links to suppliers: how to ensure that an order is captured on the library system?

• One answer: use Quotes so that the supplier sends a “proposed order” to the library system, which then records and confirms it

• Used for showroom visits, web orders, supplier selection etc

EDIFACT: library book supply

• EDIFACT Despatch Advice for (a) advance notice of changes to publication schedules, and (b) notification of actual despatches

• Order Status Enquiry for serials claims

• Order Response for claim responses

• Invoice, for annual renewals

EDIFACT: serials applications

• Adoption of EDItEUR EDIFACT formats has been patchy

• Little use in the English-speaking book trade because of existing national formats (eg X12)

• Significant use in other-language markets

• Substantial and growing use in academic library supply – because international

• No new developments, but EDItEUR continues to respond to user requests for enhancement

EDIFACT: general

• ...such as EDIFACT, are characterised by:• The perceived need to keep messages

short (transmission and processing costs): tight syntax, highly-coded content

• The philosophy that “an order is an order is an order”: one format must fit all

• So every variant from every industry is loaded into a single standard

• So each sector has to define implementation guidelines for the subset that it will use

• Result: complexity, difficult to “read”

Traditional EDI formats...

• EDItEUR is working with BISAC and BIC to develop…

• EDItX, a range of XML transaction document formats

• Using the Internet, and today’s technology, message size (within reason) is not a problem

• Following XML design practice, formats have meaningful labels and meaningful “codes”

• A message can be “readable” as well as machine-interpretable

XML formats: the next generation

• Formats precisely specified for each different application: trade order, library order, “consumer direct fulfilment” (CDF) order, etc

• Using “common components” wherever possible, and a consistent approach to structure and nomenclature

• Industry-specific, but designed from the outset to be international

A different approach

• Published on the EDItEUR website:

• Book trade set: order, order response, order status report, status enquiry, cancellation, ship notice, stock enquiry, stock report

• Library book supply set: book order

• CDF book supply set: CDF order

• Digital sales report (for ebook distributors)

EDItX documents to date

• Book trade set: invoice

• Library book supply set: order response, etc – to create a complete set including the functionality currently available in EDIFACT

• CDF book supply set: other CDF transactions

• Serials: still to come

• EDItEUR’s aim: to ensure that standards are ready in time to prevent a proliferation of inconsistent XML formats

EDItX work-in-progress

• No evidence yet of any substantial movement to adopt XML formats in the book sector

• Early adopters on the trade side are likely to be those involved in Internet commerce

• In US trade and library supply, the widely-used BISAC fixed-length format will NOT be adapted for the 13-digit ISBN (January 2007) – may stimulate move to XML

• Library sector adoption may come with new generation of XML-based systems?

EDItX adoption

• A family of XML-based standards for product information

• Began as a book information standard, with the Association of American Publishers in 1999, primarily to improve the quality of publishers’ information supplied to Internet booksellers

• EDItEUR assumed responsibility for development, maintenance and publication in 2000

ONIX

• ONIX for Books: Release 2.1 issued 2003, with minor revisions this year

• ONIX for Serials: three applications in various stages of development and piloting

• ONIX for Video and DVD

• Other ONIX applications: mEDRA DOI registration metadata, ISBN registration metadata etc

ONIX in 2004

• Adopted in the US, UK, Germany, France, Canada, Australia, Korea, and used in several other countries

• Publishers accounting for ~ 80% of US book production and over 40% of UK are delivering product information in ONIX to bibliographic agencies, wholesalers, large booksellers etc

• In Germany, the Deutsche Bibliothek is taking CIP input in ONIX format. Library of Congress is using ONIX data to enhance catalogues.

ONIX for Books

• An EDItEUR – NISO collaboration

• Three applications to date

• Serials Online Holdings (SOH): a format for communication between “publication access management systems” and libraries, to deliver details of the electronic holdings to which the library has access, and to populate reservation servers

• SOH has nearly completed piloting: the format will be published shortly

ONIX for Serials - 1

• Serials Products and Subscriptions (SPS)

• (a) Communication of journal product catalogue information through the supply chain publisher – subscription agent – library

• (b) Communication of details of subscriptions held by an individual library or a consortium

• SPS pilots are just starting; however, the pilot version of the format is also about to be published

ONIX for Serials - 2

• Serials Release Notification (SRN)

• A journal issue and article level format to be used for communicating details of printed or electronic content as it is released

• Substantially developed, but not yet ready for piloting

ONIX for Serials - 3

• www.editeur.org

• Brian Green: brian@bic.org.uk

• David Martin: david@polecat.dircon.co.uk

EDItEUR contacts