ONIX (online Information exchange) refers to any of three

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing data. It defines a set of rules for encoding electronic document, documents in a format that is both human-readable and Machine-r ...

standard metadata formats developed by EDItEUR for use primarily within the book trade. ONIX was originally a single standard for capturing and communicating

bibliographic Bibliography (from and ), as a discipline, is traditionally the academic study of books as physical, cultural objects; in this sense, it is also known as bibliology (from ). English author and bibliographer John Carter describes ''bibliograph ...

data relating to books. That standard is now referred to as

ONIX for Books ONIX for Books is an XML format for sharing bibliographic data pertaining to both traditional books and eBooks. It is the oldest of the three ONIX standards, and is widely implemented in the book trade in North America, Europe and the Asia–Pac ...

and has been expanded to include better support for

eBooks An ebook (short for electronic book), also spelled as e-book or eBook, is a book publication made available in electronic form, consisting of text, images, or both, readable on the flat-panel display of computers or other electronic devices. A ...

. A second ONIX family of standard messages, ONIX for Serials has been added to capture

metadata Metadata (or metainformation) is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including: * Descriptive ...

pertaining to serialised publications. There is also a third standard, ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL), designed to handle the licenses under which libraries and other institutions use digital resources. According to EDItEUR, one of the principal organizations behind the creation of the ONIX standards, ONIX is "an

-based family of international standards intended to support computer-to-computer communication between parties involved in creating, distributing, licensing or otherwise making available intellectual property in published form, whether physical or digital." It is to some extent based on the

indecs Content Model indecs (an acronym of "interoperability of data in e-commerce systems"; written in lower case) was a project partly funded by the European Community ''Info 2000'' initiative and by several organisations representing the music, rights, text publi ...

. A working group consisting of VLB, the cash retailers KNV, Libri and Umbreit, and the German National Library promotes the use of the standard by publishing best practices and has developed a guide each for book standard notifications and for e-book standard notifications.Leitfaden „Best Practices ONIX for Books – E-Book Standardmeldung“ (2010) http://www.vlbcms.de/files/best_practices_onix_for_books.pdf ONIX was developed in 1999, then later published to the public in January 2000 The Association of American Publishers (AAP) and EDItEUR made this protocol as issues rose in the publishing industry.

External links

BISG – Metadata committee, ONIX for Books

References

Metadata standards Bibliography file formats Industry-specific XML-based standards Markup languages