At present, some in the industry use an industry-specific EDI variant called BIC Basic. But the majority of publishers, booksellers and bibliographic agents (companies which create meta-catalogues of available books) adhere to no standard whatsoever.
-For years, the industry has experienced difficulties communicating and transferring information from one part of the industry to the other," says Stewart Gill, IT Director of McMillan publishers and convenor of the APA's standards subcommittee. The result, he said, has been an inefficient industry in which inventories have blown out and readers denied access to books for lack of data describing what is available.
To address the issue, the APA has launched a program to drive adoption of a new XML schema for books known as ONIX. Developed by the London-based International Group for Electronic Commerce in the Book and Serials Sectors (Known as EDItEUR), ONIX offers 423 different elements to describe a book, a vast improvement on the 40-odd fixed-length fields available under BIC Basic.
The APA will promote ONIX using funds obtained under the Federal Government's Book Industry Assistance Plan. Introduced after the GST saw books taxed for the first time, the plan has AU$48 million to allocate in grants for projects which alleviate the effect of the GST and - ... encourage the use of innovative technologies, improved business practices, training and skills development. Gill said the APA applied for funds under the plan early this year and received funding in June 2003.
It will now put its share of the money to work creating a portal for the industry, where any publisher's catalog of books submitted in the ONIX format will be made freely available to anyone in the industry. An extensive education program is also planned, to ensure that the industry is aware of how to convert its data to the ONIX format, while Sydney company Apostrophe Data services, a specialist in IT for the publishing industry, is assisting with the rollout.
Apostrophe's proprietor John Bullivant said he expects the data stored on the new portal will be consumed using XML Web Services, but that no decision has been made on the platform to host the portal as yet.
FYI there is a group called XBITS which is part of IDEAlliance in the US which is developing XML standards for the publisher/manufacturer transactions, using/changing the papiNet XML messages where possible. We are working closely with the BISG/BISAC subcommittee. See the idealliance.org or XMLBITS.org websites for more information.