Katharina Klemperer wrote:
> Brian Green, executive director of EDItEUR, reports the following regarding
> ONIX for Books:
>
> "ONIX records are normally created by publishers or agencies acting on
> their behalf. ONIX has a very full set of data elements, designed to
> provide potential buyers with all the information they may need to make a
> buying decision. The standard is structured to allow it to be extensible
> and is freely available from the EDItEUR website http://www.editeur.org/."
Some people see a future direction in which the user view of library
holdings is not in the local catalog but in a larger union catalog. What
I haven't seen discussed is what this does to the library workflow that
today moves from an order record to a full cataloging record in the
library database. It seems to me that if we de-couple the
ordering/inventory process from the cataloging process, then the ONIX
records could become the records that first enter the library system to
support the ordering (rather than, for example, the LoC CIP record that
many use today). The ONIX record seems more appropriate for this since
it includes data like price, availability, etc. It also can include
other data that might be useful over the lifetime of the book, such as
the actual size and weight (which some have said could help them make
storage decisions).
Cataloging could then take place at the union catalog level, with the
caveat that there needs to be an identifier that links the cataloging
record with the order record. Libraries would not need to store the
cataloging record in local databases, thus eliminating some redundancy
of storage and cycles.
kc
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
kcoyle@kcoyle.net http://www.kcoyle.net
ph.: 510-540-7596 skype: kcoylenet
fx.: 510-848-3913
mo.: 510-435-8234
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Received on Mon Dec 17 2007 - 13:39:11 EST