This glossary is from the ONIX for Books Specification + Best Practice Guide + Codelists posted to EDItEUR’s website at https://www.editeur.org/93/Release-3.0-Downloads/#Best%20practice. Appearing as Appendix A.1 in the Best Practice Guide, we have re-created it here for easy reference and repeat reading.
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A new(ish) subject categorization scheme developed in part from the legacy BIC scheme, but updated, internationalized and significantly extended to create a multi-lingual scheme with global applicability. It differs from BIC in that it makes greater use of post-coordination, and has a mechanism for national extensions to qualifiers within the scheme. An interactive category browser is available at ns.editeur.org/thema. Like ONIX, Thema is managed by EDItEUR. Thema was introduced in late 2013, and is currently in the early stages of implementation in many countries. It was initially intended to be used in parallel with existing nationally-focused schemes, but with the potential to supplant them as a single global scheme. It has already been adopted widely across the book trade in a number of countries, including Germany, Spain, the UK, Norway and Sweden, and has become a key part of Amazon’s ‘browse by subject’ scheme in its European stores.
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