Standards for the Digital Age Brian Green EDIt

Standards for the Digital Age Brian Green EDIt. EUR / International ISBN Agency Moscow, September 2008

What is EDIt. EUR? • The international body for book industry standards • 90 members from 20 countries (most EU countries, Australia, Canada, Japan, Korea, Russia, USA etc. ) • Develops and maintains major book trade standards for product information, EDI etc. • Acts as a co-ordinating “umbrella” for national standards bodies • Members include publishers, distributors, wholesalers, booksellers, subscription agents, libraries, systems vendors

EDIt. EUR standards • ONIX product information standards • ONIX for licensing terms • EDIFACT EDI formats • EDIt. X XML-based trading message formats • Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) EDIt. EUR also manages the International ISBN Agency and represents the book industry at international standards bodies (ISO, GS 1 etc)

Why do we need standards ? • In one word – “INTEROPERABILITY” • In a digital environment, where computer to computer communications are dominant, information needs to be transmitted between systems without the need for human intervention • Without standards we are either tied to trading partners or have to implement multiple formats • Standards enable us to trade more easily and effectively with many partners, all using the same interoperable communication formats

Whose standards? • Proprietary standards (e. g. Microsoft, Adobe, Mobipocket ) – Not always a bad thing as long as they are open (e. g. Kodak, PDF) but they usually provide advantage for te originator • International ISO standards (e. g. ISBN, ISSN) and official national equivalent (GOST, ANSI etc) – Widely accepted so low risk of implementation – Lengthy process and lack of flexibility not always appropriate to required time-scales. – National standards limited and parochial

Whose standards? • Internet standards (e. g. W 3 C, IETF) – Enable Internet. Include mark-up languages (e. g. HTML) stylesheets (e. g. . CSS) etc. • Trade standards (e. g. EDIt. EUR, NISO) – Developed on the basis of specific industry requirements though open consensus procedure – Sometimes an annotated subset of official standards (e. g. EDIFACT, X 12, RFID). Sometimes completely new (e. g. ONIX) – Fast, flexible and controlled by and for our industry

Standards for the book trade • ISBN started as an industry standard in UK 1968, became international (ISO 2108) in 1970. Now used in 174 countries – EAN 13 article identifier not established until 1977 • ISBN in barcodes in 1980 • Book trade EDI using national standards (BISAC and X 12 in US, Tradacoms in UK) in 1980 s • EDIt. EUR international EDIFACT EDI 1992 • ONIX for rich information about books 2000. Now used in 14 countries

New book trade standards • ONIX for Licensing Terms / ACAP for expressing usage rights • International Standard Text Code (ISTC) for identifying underlying works • International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) for identifying authors and other contributors • Radio Frequency Identifiers (RFID) implementation for books • . epub standard for e-book text format

The need for standards: e-books • File formats – proprietary devices and formats try to tie users to one channel – Users don’t want to be locked in (look at what has happened in the digital music industry) –. epub format becoming normal “generic” format output by publishers which is then converted to other formats – Sony Reader has announced support for. epub format but will publishers sell unprotected. epub versions?

The need for standards: e-books • Identification – ISBN Standard (ISO 2108: 2005): “Each different format of an electronic publication (e. g. “. lit” , “. pdf”, “. html”, “. pdb”) that is published and made separately available shall be given a separate ISBN” – Some US publishers only assign one ISBN for all ebook formats – This makes it difficult for users and libraries to know which formats are available as most book databases rely on ISBN for discovery and ordering – ISBN, EDIt. EUR and other book trade standards bodies recommend separate ISBNs for each format

Managing multiple formats with ISTC • New ISO International Standard Text Code (ISTC) identifies the underlying work • One ISTC can link to many manifestations of a work • Publishers and booksellers will use ISTC to link all the different e-book and other formats • International ISTC Registration Authority is now set up and will start to issue numbers next month • Applications have been invited from potential national registration agencies

Product information standards • ONIX for Books: the international standard for communicating rich information about books. – Comprehensive bibliographic detail – Text: descriptions, reviews, author info, extracts – Images: jackets, thumbnails, author photos – Audio and video, website links – Territorial rights – Prices and availability in different markets – Promotional campaign information – Helps to sell more books

ONIX being enhanced for e-books • ONIX was originally designed for physical books and supply chain, • ONIX for Books version 3. 0 now under development to provide a better platform for digital publications and remove redundant elements from old releases • Input from 14 user countries, including active participation from Russia • Discussions taking place at the moment • Release planned for Late October/early November 2008

Communicating Licensing Terms • ONIX for Publications Licence (ONIX-PL) standard expresses any publisher-library licence in XML for linking from e-journal or e-book • User of e-content can see user-friendly lists of what they may and may not do with the e-content • The Automated Content Access Protocol (ACAP) project is using ONIX licensing term semantics to express permissions for use of web content, in the form of tags that can be interpreted by search engine crawlers

EDI standards development • EDIt. EUR EDIFACT EDI message formats, developed 15 years ago, still working well but technology has now advanced • EDIt. EUR has developed a new generation of EDI standards. EDIt. X XML EDI formats • In addition to normal commercial messages, EDIt. X includes a Digital Sales Report message for distributors to inform publishers of e-book sales • Because they are based on XML, EDIt. X also enables the development of standard web services, the Web 2. 0 solution for commercial transactions

Identifying authors/contributors • How to uniquely identify authors? – Many authors have the same name – Sometimes the same author uses different names – In different alphabets/character sets (e. g. roman/cyrillic) there can be alternative ways of spelling the same name • A new ISO standard in development, the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) will provide a unique identifier for authors and other contributors • Due to be published in 2009

Radio Frequency ID (RFID) • An RFID chip in a book can uniquely identify that copy of a book without the need to have “line of sight” – (e. g. the total contents of a box can be read without opening it. Books on a shelf can be scanned and listed without removing them) • Currently, the chips are being inserted by distributors or bookshops and not by publishers • We need a standard that includes ISBN and serial number but also identifies the company that inserted the chip, so as to avoid duplication of serial number • EDIt. EUR, International ISBN Agency and GS 1 have formed a joint working party to develop a standard

Summary • There are many international standards already in place to facilitate trading in a digital environment • Existing standards are being upgraded to take into account new digital products and supply chains • All publishers, distributors, wholesalers, booksellers, librarians and their systems suppliers should keep informed of standards developments and participate if possible. • EDIt. EUR is happy to collaborate with the Russian book trade, which is already actively represented on the ONIX International Steering Committee

Useful URLS • EDIt. EUR – www. editeur. org • International ISBN Agency – www. isbn-international. org • ISO TC 46 SC 9 – www. niso. org/international/tc 46 • ACAP (Automated Content Access Protocoll – www. theacap. org Brian Green brian@editeur. org