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Data exchange is never static. Here are some recent changes to best practices and standards that the industry is implementing.

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BookNet Canada, through the National Bibliographic Committee, has endorsed the Book Industry Study Group’s (BISG’s) Statement on Misuse of the title and subtitle fields: A reminder on best practice in supplying marketing copy. “BookNet Canada agrees that the BISG statement on Title and Subtitle Misuse addresses a real problem common in current book metadata. It is frustrating to see effective and simple dedicated-for-its-purpose metadata options for online marketing go unasked for by retailers and not implemented by publishers who then resort to stick-the-promo-copy in the book title. It reduces the effectiveness and usability of book metadata for everyone.”

ONIX 3.1 (April 4)

Please Read BookNet’s blog or please see the full announcement here.

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BookNet Canada & BISG's BISAC TO Thema Translator updated to support BISAC 2021 and Thema 1.5 (July 13, 2022)

The BNC BISAC to Thema Translator is available at http://bisactothema.biblioshare.org/

To find our more about the Translator, an introductory blog post is available at http://www.booknetcanada.ca/blog/2014/4/24/introducing-bncs-bisac-to-thema-translator.html.

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2019

US ISBN Agency to Start Using 979-ISBNs in 2020 (November 2019)

979 ISBNs have been in limited use in the Canadian supply chain for several years – most distributors have a few dozen in their inventory. Currently ISBN Canada has not issued any and has no plans to start. The US, however, is running out of 978 ISBN-13 and could begin issuing 979s as soon as January 2020. We can anticipate their increased volume in our supply chain over the next year or two and when one of the major US publishers gets their first block we can expect explosive growth. 

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Revised Best Practices for Keywords in Metadata: Guide for North American Data Senders and Receivers (February 2018)

A revised edition of the BISG authored and BNC endorsed document been published, chock-a-block with examples, samples and sage advice. You can get yours at https://bisg.org/store/viewproduct.aspx?id=6972954.

2017

Revision completed to ISO ISBN Standard (December 2017)

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If you need more information on ISBN head over to BookNet Canada's ISBN page

New interactive code list lookup sites available

EDItEUR supports both ONIX Code lists and Thema Subject and Qualifier lists with dedicated lookup sites, complete with their notes. Pro tip on using either of these in any form: read the notes! You can't know the intent of the value without them and using precisely defined metadata is fundamental to any business exchange. The description is not intentionally misleading but the notes give clarity. Use your software drop downs as reminders of for the definitions the notes provide and these interactive look-ups make it easy to check. (A little prompt to developers: You should think about how to integrate note access into your ONIX systems and these might help.)

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