Onix book notices (XML)

Hello, is there a way to import to Zotero Onix book notices, which are in XML format ? Compared to including the book by way of the ISBN, these notices are more detailed & accurate.

(To explain a bit: ONIX notices are used by the international book industry as the standard for books metadata. As the fields are a bit different from ZOTERO, I'm not sure it is indeed possible (the fields include for example prices, with & without taxes).)

These notices (available, in France, only to DILICOM subscribers, i.e. professionals) are the basis for the human-readable file, such as https://dilicom-prod.centprod.com/detail_article_consultation_editeur.html?ean=9782757886991&emet=3012166100000 for instance.

For more info on ONIX :

- in English: https://www.editeur.org/ and https://www.editeur.org/83/Overview/ on ONIX (Home/About/STANDARDS...)

- in French: https://onixedit.com/Portals/0/docs/manuals/PDF/Manuel de l'utilisateur ONIXEDIT.pdf

Thanks for any help
  • It's not currently possible. It'd be generally possible to do, but what's the use case here?
    For citation information, I don't actually think that these data are better than ISBN data, which typically come from libraries and, e.g., include the place of publication which is typically not included in sales info.
  • edited September 3, 2021
    Thanks Adam for your quick response & continued committment to Zotero.

    My question is most probably very minoritary : after having used Zotero for years for research purposes, I am now trying to use it for commercial purposes: i.e., I'm opening up a bookshop & for the time being, I don't want to pay expensive bookshops' softwares. I may try to use Abelujo, a free software dedicated to bookshops, but didn't yet manage to install it (it runs only on Linux, and I only recently managed to install Linux).

    The added value, for me, would be to automatically include a resume of the book (which ISBN doesn't always do), useful when managing a bookshop. I would also appreciate if it could automatically include the prices, with & without taxes, but as Zotero doesn't have a field for price data, I suppose this is impossible.

    Currently, I manually insert prices in the "authorization field", and use the "cote" field (just above "authorization") to put the code-name of the distributor to whom I have to command the book (bookshops don't contract directly to editors but to their distributors, for instance 3012600500000 SODIS refers to the book's ID for command to SODIS distributor). By doing a quick search with "SODIS", or putting them in a "SODIS folder", I can then easily prepare my commands to SODIS. I can also transfer the files to OpenOffice Calc, thus having a column with prices which allows me to do the accounting.

    It is indeed strange that the place of publication is not included, but is this always the case? French ONIX files have a field refering to the BNF (Bibliothèque Nationale de France, equivalent of US Library of Congress), which displays, for instance, http://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb445178914. This ID does include the publication place, and the ISBN (as you can see following the link).

    I wouldn't bother Zotero with that if I could find another way, but I have less than 2 weeks to prepare my orders for at least 3 000 books (at term, I will have around 5 000 books in my bookshop).

    ERRATUM: 3012600500000 SODIS DOES NOT refers to the book's ID for command to SODIS but only to SODIS in general.

  • Just for info: I'm recently adding hundreds of items to Zotero by using the ISBN, and I very often find incomplete data &/or mistakes. Is ISBN really more accurate than ONIX ?
  • ISBN tries to get data from BnF and where that exists it's great, but it looks like BnF is surprisingly selective in which ISBNs it finds (looks like maybe only one ISBN for any book, so e.g. not the paperback ISBN if they have the hardcover). If the data come from Worldcat, they are indeed not great.

    I guess what I'd say is that it's a fair amount of work, but manageable for a develope -- you're likely looking at 3-5hs dev work, so maybe 500-600US$ if you want to try to find someone to code that in a rush. Or you could see if @AbeJellinek who works on translators for Zotero full time considers this high enough priority to put it on his list.
  • Thanks. If both ISBN & ONIX fetch data from BnF, then they're the same for bibliographical purposes, but ONIX would have commercial info as a + (and also the "Science pour tous" label : https://www.sciencespourtous.org/un-label-pour-identifier-les-livres-scientifiques/ ).

  • No, we wouldn't look up additional data as part of an XML import; Zotero would just import what's in the XML, hence no publisher location(s).
    The commercial info also doesn't have corresponding Zotero fields, so much of it wouldn't be saved in a useful/structured way.
  • "The commercial info also doesn't have corresponding Zotero fields, so much of it wouldn't be saved in a useful/structured way. "

    Yes, I was afraid of that issue. I do suppose it's a lot of work for a very minoritary use...
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