Transcript: What ONIX can do: Leveraging metadata to support the discoverability of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis publishing and books by Indigenous authors - Tech Forum 2026

Transcript: What ONIX can do: Leveraging metadata to support the discoverability of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis publishing and books by Indigenous authors - Tech Forum 2026

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  Lauren Stewart: Hello,everyone, and thank you for joining us for today's tech forum session. I'm Lauren Stewart from BookNet, and welcome to "What ONIX can do: Leveraging metadata to support the discoverability of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis publishing and books by Indigenous authors." Today's event is presented in partnership with BTLF. As such, we're offering simultaneous interpretation in French. So, to access the French audio, click the interpretation button in the Zoom menu to select the language you would like to hear. If you want to listen to the interpreted language only, please click mute original audio. Before we get started, I'd like to acknowledge that BookNet Canada's operations are remote and our colleagues contribute their work from the traditional territories of the Mississaugas of the Credit, the Anishinaabe, the Haudenosaunee, the Wyandot, the Mi'kmaq, the Ojibwa of Fort William First Nation, the Three Fires Confederacy of First Nations, which includes the Ojibwa, the Odawa, and the Potawatomie, and the Métis, the original nations and peoples of the lands that we now call Beeton, Brampton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vaughan, and Windsor. We encourage you to visit the native-land.ca website to learn more about the peoples whose land you're joining from today. Moreover, we at BookNet endorse the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and support an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to spacemaking in the book industry. This industry has long been an industry of gatekeeping. Anyone who works at any stage of the book supply chain carries a responsibility to serve our readers by publishing, promoting, and supplying works that represent the wide extent of human experiences and identities in all of that complicated intersectionality. And we at BookNet are committed to working with our partners in the industry as we move towards a framework that supports spacemaking, which ensures that marginalised creators and professionals all have the opportunity to contribute, work, and lead. And this land acknowledgement is offered in the spirit of the work we are sharing with you today. And I'm excited to get started. If during the presentation you have any questions, please use the Q&A panel found in the bottom menu. Now let me introduce our speaker. Chris Saynor is EDItEUR's standard editor, working on standards including ONIX, Thema, and EDItX. As part of this work, he is involved in the W3C Publishing Group Accessibility task force, which is focused and working on guidelines for accessibility metadata display, especially looking at the ONIX standard and making sure it meets the needs of communicating accessibility metadata. Prior to EDItEUR, he worked for a solutions provider in France and was a bookseller for many years in both France and the UK, and a dear friend to BookNet. Over to you, Chris. Chris Saynor: Thank you, Lauren. It would help if I click unmute. Thank you to BookNet for inviting me to talk about this very important subject today. Let me get going. First of all, for those of you who do not know the organisation I work for, EDItEUR, just a quick overview. So, we're a not-for-profit membership organisation. We're a tiny little company. We're two full-timers and two part-timers. We're based in London, but we have a global
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  outlook with membersfrom around the globe and from all parts of the supply chain. And that's a very important aspect of our standards. So, let's get on with the talk. But before I do... So, when I talk about ONIX today, I'm talking about ONIX 3. ONIX 2.1 is an obsolete standard. In fact, 2026 will mark 20 years since the last update to ONIX 2.1, which was in 2006, which apparently was also the same year that as Twitter started. I'd also like to apologise in advance if I have created some examples based on information I've found on the internet, on websites. If I've made any mistakes, they're not the publisher's fault. They're my fault. So, I apologise in advance. I also should apologise in case I mispronounce anything, something that may happen. Anyway, ONIX already covers a lot of what you need to convey information about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis publishing and books by Indigenous authors. So that's what I want to look at today. What is already available? I'm also going to highlight one new code that was added last year, which is going to be very useful for the Canadian market. But before doing that, I thought I should give you a brief reminder of what ONIX is. So, here's a basic illustration of the commercial metadata supply chain. You have a publisher or distributor, enters data into a database. It's then communicated downstream. It could be a retailer, a data aggregator, or somebody else. And in between, there's a standardised message. And that's what ONIX is. So, it's a standardised XML message used to communicate from machine to machine. So, ONIX uses standardised syntax and agreed semantics. ONIX is not a database for management or storage of data, nor is it a template for how you should display your data. It's important always to remember it's for machine-readable data structures and codes used to convey information. You have to think of it as the common language of the global supply chain, the book supply chain. If you're unfamiliar with ONIX or you're new to ONIX, there is a brief introductory video which you can see at this link. The links will be provided to you as well. We also have to distinguish between machine-to-machine communication and human-to- human, which is what interests most of us here. So, what do we mean by human-to-human? So, you might have this person who bears a striking resemblance to me but with much better skin and fewer wrinkles, who is going to enter information about a book that I have in front of me into my own database. And that database is going to use terms I understand. So, it's going to be using English text, maybe some British terms, etc. And I'm going to put that into my database. That database is going to have that mapped to the right bit of ONIX. And then your database, a machine, is going to send that message format to another machine. The ONIX is designed for those machines to talk to each other and then at the other end, in this case, send it to somebody in Brazil. Their interface is in Brazilian Portuguese, using terms that make sense to them, okay? The other key thing to always remember is ONIX uses codelists. Those codes are used to communicate information. It's those codes that appear in the metadata. So, for example, we have the notion of the person who wrote a title, the author. The word author, in any language,
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  never appears inyour ONIX. It's the code A01. When you look at the ONIX codelists, we have the code, which never changes in any language. Then you have a heading and a note, and those headings and notes can appear in any language. So, it doesn't matter what language you use to enter data or what language you use at the other end. Those codes represent a concept. So, that gives ONIX an independence from language and from scripts. And the reason I wanted to emphasise this is that we have to remember ONIX is there to communicate information. We're not trying to impose on any user what words they use, what phrases they use in their own databases, or, more importantly, what phrases or words they use to display that information to their users. So, what about ONIX for Indigenous content and contributors? So, within ONIX, there are three key areas that are really important for identifying content by, about, or relevant to Indigenous Nations, Peoples, communities, and individuals. And they are... So, whenever you see that purple word in brackets, they are actual ONIX tags. So, the <Contributor> so this is information about who created the content, a writer, an illustrator, an editor, a voice actor, etc., and how they identify with or are linked to an Indigenous community. The <Subject> so whether the content is about, relates to, or features Indigenous Nations, Peoples, communities, individuals, or topics. And then <Language> so whether the work is written or spoken, either wholly or partially, in an Indigenous language. There are other elements of ONIX which are also important: information about the publisher or the imprint, descriptive texts, prizes and awards, and also supporting resources and promotional material. So, first of all, let's have a look at <Contributor>. <Contributor> is where any information about somebody who's been involved in the creation of a title or a work can be cited in ONIX. And you can describe various aspects of that persona. So, this is what the information that you might put in your own databases about an individual who's contributed to this title could appear. But this is how it would appear in ONIX, hence the purple pointy brackets, etc. And as you see, we have a code A02 that represents the role, in this case, with. So, this author is not the principal author. They're with. And we have the author's name and a brief biographical description. But we can also use ONIX to convey information about a group. So, in this case, it's the First Nation themselves who are the authors because they're all stories, oral histories, from this group. So, we can convey that in ONIX. And because it's a corporate name, not the name of an individual, we can repeat that in different languages. So, we can include the name in English, in French, and in Chipewyan. Excuse me if I mispronounce that. So, groups can be a contributor. The name of the tag, corporate name, is a bit misleading because it's not necessarily a corporation. It's a body in that sense, so it's any form of group. So, contributors can either be individuals or some sort of group. And because of the way ONIX 3 works, you can also put descriptive texts in multiple languages and multiple scripts. There's nothing to stop you doing this in ONIX 3. So, I've done one in English and French. But in this case, we could also include a biography in Atikamekw, excuse the pronunciation. The advantage of including information in different
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  languages is evenif you don't think anybody will display it, it's part of the metadata. So, it's there if somebody wants to display it in the future. But also people can store that data, and it's searchable as well. So, it's always good to put the most important languages in your ONIX. A very important part of the <Contributor> composite in ONIX is the <ContributorPlace>. Now, this is a way of telling people what is the connection between this contributor, be they an individual or a group, what is their connection to a particular place or places. So, you can do this on a country level, and for countries we use ISO* codes, and they are in List 491. You can also do this for regions. So, for example, for each of the provinces, that's List 49. However, there are no ISO* code lists for Indigenous territorialities or geographies. The reason we use ISO* codes, by the way, is because they're global. They're used in a lot of different things. You'll be familiar with them because you see them, for example, in URLs. You'll often see the country codes. They're a standard way, and they're used in a lot of machine-to-machine communication. So, as there are no ISO* codes for Indigenous territorialities, you can use the <LocationName> element within <ContributorPlace>. This is a plain text field, so it can be repeated in multiple languages and multiple scripts. And this is what it would look like. And from October of last year, there is now a new code in List 151, the code 12. And you should be familiar with this list because it is the list that you would use to say that somebody is Canadian or from Quebec. So, you can say it's either Canadian, or you can say they're from one of the provinces. So, you should be familiar with this list, List 151. And the code that was added, in both English and French, was Indigenous too. And we've used this terminology, Indigenous geographies or territorialities, to try not to put any barriers to what an Indigenous territoriality is. So, it can be used in accordance with the way that the Indigenous group labels their own territoriality. The next important bit of ONIX is <Subject>. Now, this is where you convey information about what the content is about. So, you're all familiar with the fact that ONIX can be used to communicate codes from global commercial schemes like Thema or the BISAC codes, which are U.S. but are widely used in Anglophone Canada. And also ONIX can be used to convey codes from library schemes or other well-known schemes. So, they are an important element of identifying content using those BISAC, Thema, and others. BISAC and Thema complement each other, and the recommendation to any Canadian audience who's already using BISAC is also to add Thema and to get the same people to add both. The people who know the content should add the BISAC codes and should add the Thema codes. Don't rely on any sort of automatic mapping because you'll lose out on the strengths of both systems. And again, those codes, they go into ONIX and those codes are consistent across languages when it comes to Thema, because Thema is available as headings in many languages. And so again, you get that language independence. So, code represents a concept inside the data. And we have the same title here, but the French translation, so we can use the same Thema codes, category codes, and the same Thema qualifiers for the French Canadian edition. And it's up to somebody who receives that data. They could display the French Canadian headings or the English headings, or they could display them with their own preferred terminology. They could also combine various codes here to create their own preferred display terms.
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  Thema doesn't imposeon any downstream partner, any retailer, the terms that they use to display that information. Within <Subject>, there is an element called <NameAsSubject>. So, this composite is a structured way of saying who this particular title is about or who is the main character featured in this title. Now, that who can be an individual person or a group. They can be living or historical. They can be real or fictitious, or somewhere in between. You can include standard identifiers within that, such as ISNI*, which gives you that way of linking across languages and across scripts. For those of you who are familiar with your ONIX structures, it's the same structure inside ONIX as <Contributor> but it's called <NameAsSubject>. It also allows you to state alternative versions of the same name. So, again, ONIX, ONIX 3 at least, allows for repetition in different languages and different scripts. So, for this title, we can repeat <NameAsSubject> with two versions because of two different groups. And those groups can have their alternative names and can have names in English and French. And in one case, it can also show the name in one of the Algonquin languages. So, you have that ability to communicate in a clear and structured way when a particular Indigenous group, Indigenous nation, etc., is the subject of a particular title. And that works in French as well as in English. So, this is the French version of the same title. And as you can see, the ONIX is exactly the same because we're communicating the same information, which gives downstream partners the opportunity to either use the English text or the French text, whichever they prefer, and have the other one searchable, or even to use the Algonquin text. So, <NameAsSubject> is a very powerful way of clearly communicating when a book is about a particular Indigenous group or nation. But sometimes there will actually be an entity, a geographical entity, that's recognised. So, for example, if you want to say this book is about the Navajo, or the Diné, but is also about the Navajo Nation, which has a recognised... You can find it on a map. It has recognised boundaries. There are agreements between the U.S. federal government and the Navajo Nation. You can also use... There's a special set of keywords for place names that are the subject of the title. So, that's if you want to make that distinction between the group, the people, the nation, in a more sort of broader approach, and if you want to say, but this is also about this specific place. <NameAsSubject> also works really well for individuals. So, here we have a graphic novel that is about a particular person who was the last identified person as part of this particular Indigenous group. So, we can say her name, her Indigenous name. We can give an alternative name, the name she was known by. And we can also say this book is also about the group. So, as you can see, we can use <NameAsSubject> for an individual and also for groups. We can also use it for things like this. So, a person who appears in many stories and many tales, in this particular case, in many of the communities that live in the Arctic Circle, and has very similar names but different in different languages. So, you can put those different names in your ONIX using <NameAsSubject> as well, which improves the possibilities of discovery and search.
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  The third mainelement that I wanted to talk to you about was <Language>. <Language> is really important. This is where you say my title is written or spoken, either wholly or partially, in this language or uses some words from this language. So, if you look at this little bit of ONIX, this is a bilingual book. And we can use the ONIX to say it's in Ojibwe and English. And we can even specify... So, Ojibwe can be written in different scripts. So, in this particular case, it's written using Latin script. For English, we don't put a script in because English is nearly always written in Latin script. We would put in a script if it was written in a different script. Another example, so this is a bilingual title, but this is a bilingual title where the Inuktitut is written both in Canadian syllabics and Latin script. So, again, in our ONIX, we can be very clear. It's in two languages, but one of those languages is presented with two different scripts. It's very clear so people know. We can also use our ONIX to send information. So, the title of this book. We can send the title in its three parts. So, in English, in Inuktitut, in Latin script, and Inuktitut in syllabics. And then we can also say, "And here are the three put together." So, you are including both languages in all three forms. So, you're allowing those that can display the opportunity to display it all. You're also giving more search options, and you're also giving the full title. So, you can use ONIX to put everything there as well. So, as you've seen, ONIX already has the structures to allow you to communicate a lot of information to support the discoverability of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis publishing and books by Indigenous authors. So, what I would say is I encourage you all to have a look at what you are already using, and are you making good use of this. And then also have a look at what I've talked about in this, and also some of the other parts of ONIX that we highlight in the papers that have been published, and say, what parts of ONIX that I'm not yet using could I make use of? What would make most sense for the titles that we publish? Or if you're a data receiver, what elements of ONIX would you like to get? What would help you bring these titles to your customers, to the readers, etc.? So, be proactive. Get this information into your ONIX 3 files. If you're a publisher or distributor, start putting that information in there. It's a gradual process. You know, if you're not yet using these things and you need to add them to your ONIX you're not using, it will be a gradual process but do start putting it in there. Do not wait until downstream partners start asking for it, because it's much easier, when you're creating the metadata for a title, to do everything when you're working on that title, rather than going back and then trying to add things to many titles. And of course, if downstream partners start seeing that information in your ONIX, then they say, "Oh, we can make use of this." So, I encourage you to do that. These links will be made available to you. These are the documents that have been published in English and French about how you can make better use of ONIX. And then that's it from me. Back to Lauren. Lauren: Thank you, Chris. We're incredibly excited to see all of this knowledge consolidated together in the best practices that were released and the documentation that has been both put out in English as well as translated by our peers and friends over at BTLF. So, we do have some opportunity for some Q&A. We also have our colleagues from BTLF, as well as numerous colleagues from BookNet, that have joined us today. So, if there are
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  questions that youhave, you can put them both in the Q&A box as well as in the chat. And we can talk those through with Chris. And I think I'll get started, Chris. You kind of flagged some opportunities for users and what they could be doing with the data that they already have but perhaps didn't have a home yet in ONIX, if I'm encapsulating that correctly, and opportunities for disseminating that information. What other opportunities do you have for workflow, that you could see for workflow for publishers that are handling this kind of data? Is there anything that you think this offers as an opportunity, or that would kind of expand the use of information that they're already collecting and sharing on behalf of both the books as well as contributors? Chris: So, for publishers, what we tried to do in this talk and in the document is to highlight what's already part of ONIX 3 because we're conscious that there's no point adding lots of new elements to ONIX, which could have a cost implication. It's best to start working on what's already there. And everything that we've suggested you could use should already be part of most systems or easy enough to add. It may just be a question of adding a new code or something, so to make it relatively easy to get that information into the system. What I would say for publishers or distributors is to take some of your titles, if you have titles that fall into this Indigenous topic, and see what data you're already putting in there. And think about, again, what would make the most sense for us? What information do we have internally or in our catalogue that we would like to put in that ONIX? And then maybe, in a more medium term, is to think about what information you would like to collect. So, for example, some of the information about a contributor being Indigenous to a particular place, there may be conversations that you want to have with your contributors to make sure that you get the right term. If you're going to associate them publicly with a territoriality, that you have their consent and you're using the right naming convention, do they want it displayed, and in which languages, etc. Does that answer part of the question, Lauren? Lauren: No, I think that that's fantastic. And I think it also, kind of, opens up your vision for where you see EDItEUR supporting the implementation of these best practices, and how your, kind of, expectations as an organisation is in working with the national groups. Would you mind explaining a bit how that information flow works between publishers, national groups...? Well, I guess not just publishers but ONIX implementers, whether they be publishers or downstream data recipients, and then national groups, and then coming up to EDItEUR? Chris: So, EDItEUR, one thing to understand about EDItEUR is EDItEUR never decides to add something into ONIX or Thema because we want to. It's always something that has come from somewhere in the commercial supply chain. And I mentioned earlier, we are a global organisation with members around the world. And in Canada, we have two organisations, BookNet Canada and BTLF, that are very active members, who organise groups within Canada, both Anglophone Canada and Francophone Canada, where they can have conversations with key players in the Canadian markets. They can be somewhere that can have conversations about what matters to Indigenous publishers, Indigenous authors, Indigenous booksellers inside Canada, what matters to them,
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  what kind ofinformation they would like to see in the Canadian commercial metadata supply chain, and then have conversations with us at EDItEUR and say, "Well, in the Canadian markets, this is what we'd like to see." And either, if it's a very simple, "We just need to add this language because it's missing from the ONIX codelist and we have 16 books that have just been published," that's a very easy one to add. But with some of these questions, we form a working group and we try and get different people to be involved in those working groups so that at EDItEUR... Because, you know, I'm a man based in London, so I'm not an expert in the Canadian Indigenous markets. So, we got together from the Canadian groups but also from Australia, another market where Indigenous publishing is really important, and started having conversations. We started looking at what was already in ONIX and would that part of ONIX work for what we're trying to do. So, we'll discuss it in that working group, and then the groups, BookNet Canada and BTLF, will go back to stakeholders within the Canadian market, and the Australian Publishers Association went back to the Australian market and had conversations with them. So, what do you think? Do you think this works? Is this the right language? Are we using the right term? So, it's been a very, very active listening process for us at EDItEUR to say, right, we do have a role at EDItEUR also to maintain a standard. That's one of the reasons I emphasised how ONIX works is because we're trying to... We want to create that concept. We need a code or a structure to represent that so it can be communicated internationally. Sometimes we're aware there are problems with international codes. A lot of the language codes which we take from ISO* lists, because again, they're used in so many different applications around the globe. An ISO* code is easy to recognise if you're searching a database in a library, if you're searching an archive, so many different places. So, we're trying to find the balance between we need a code and a recognised code, but do we need to add language to the way we display it in our codelists so the concept is clear to the users, etc. So, it's an ongoing process. It's a conversation. And we also have to remember that we are creating a metadata standard for the global commercial book industry. We're not a library standard. We're not standards used by big national libraries or university libraries, which need different kinds of metadata and have their own standards and things like that. Does that answer part of your question, Lauren? Lauren: Yeah. And I think the other piece that I'll add that was really valuable working with you in this working group is that you were able to so skilfully identify the different national groups, or not necessarily even national groups, but different interest groups that would want to be informed and/or participate in this process. And so I remember numerous times throughout the process, you were connecting us with groups in New Zealand in Aotearoa, in South Africa, in some of the Nordic countries, and really enriching that dialogue where, without that facilitation and information, I don't know that we would have been able to, kind of, like, suggest these robust changes in documentation over the years. And that was really appreciated. The other thing I'll ask some of my colleagues to do, if there's an opportunity, is to put a link in the chat to the EDItEUR browser for ONIX. There's, of course, the documentation that
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  you can downloadfrom the EDItEUR site. And there's also this online browser, which is excellent, that you can use to not only see precisely the codelists and how to navigate the various parts of ONIX, but what Chris was mentioning before, it also incorporates a search element that is using synonyms and notes that Chris and his colleagues at EDItEUR, including Graham Bell, add to and enrich on a regular, ongoing basis. So, if you're looking to find something in a codelist, you can use this browser and access not only just the literal terminology in the codelist but also these kind of rich synonyms and other information that Chris and Graham add to it, which is based on feedback from all of these different ONIX implementers around the world. So, we really appreciate that work that you do as well. Thinking about that dataset, have you... I use the browser regularly for the codelists. Have you seen ONIX implementers using the additional data that you've added there, the synonyms and the notes? Have you seen them apply that in any interesting ways? Chris: So, we're not always aware of how people make use of the materials that we make available free of charge to everybody. But we know there are people who, for example, we have member organisations that get an SQL version of our browser, so they have all the language versions in it and all those synonyms. And we've had discussions with people who are improving their own search facilities within systems to try and make it better for users. So, there are people experimenting as we add more to the notes, etc. Now, they've learned from what we've done with Thema, because if you look at the Thema browser, which we will talk about more next week, next Thursday, 22nd, put it in your diaries. Lauren: We'll put a link in the chat for sure for people to register for that one. Chris: Because Thema uses a lot more terms in the notes and hidden search terms. So, people have been implementing that, and now they're trying to do similar things with certain of the ONIX lists to help their users find the right terms. Language is a really good example because I don't have to explain to this audience that language can be written in one way because somebody wrote it down because they heard it. But it actually should be... Its endonym is a different word, a different spelling, etc. And when we're made aware—I would like to thank both BookNet and BTLF because you do great jobs of passing that information on to us when it concerns the Canadian market—we will add those to the language lists so the terms are visible and searchable. Lauren: Yeah, I mean, I can speak a bit to that pipeline for anyone that is here that is an ONIX implementer in either the English or the French market. Both BookNet and BTLF were informed by very active members of the publishing community, as well as those who receive and work with ONIX information downstream. And so this originally... BookNet's, kind of, work started... I won't speak for BTLF, but BookNet's work started with this when we started to receive outreach from a publisher who was raising some concerns about terminology and other standards. And, kind of, this coalesced with some other work we had been doing around language, particularly Indigenous languages on Turtle Island, and how
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  needing to havestandards, kind of, represent the current thinking and use of various standards impacting and reflecting Indigenous worldviews as they work with book products. And we then have this layer of a National Bibliographic Committee, which is something that we are very interested in always having new members in. We have an active group there. We meet either four to six times a year, kind of the cadence of that. And if you want to send us an email at standards@booknetcanada.ca, you can get involved there. And so that group is quite involved with consideration of the various outputs of our working group with BTLF, and the Australian publishers, and EDItEUR, of course, and kind of both analysed and fed back information to us to take back to the working group. So, we're very aware that this work isn't finished, right? We only hit a couple of the topics that have come from our various demand indicators and users. So, I'm wondering... One of the things that I know we talked about quite a bit when we were launching this was that we know it's not done and that we know we're going to get feedback. In addition to that feedback that will be coming in, is coming in, in your kind of landscape visioning and understanding of the larger standards community, is there anything that you feel might inform next steps in terms of identification of not just Indigenous content but content for and on contributors from other equity-seeking communities? Are there other things that you've been thinking about that you could see as opportunities or things that we should think about? Chris: Very interesting question. This comes up when we're discussing ONIX and identifying contributors because there are some identities that some people in the supply chain would like to see in ONIX but not necessarily everybody wants to see in ONIX, because there's a lot of... It's really important to get consent. There's a lot of really well- meaning and well-intentioned desire to communicate information, but the creators, the contributors themselves, must also be part of that conversation before we start putting things into public metadata. We also, because we're a global standard, always have to bear in mind that there are some things you have to be very careful about communicating, because it's illegal in certain countries, because of things that have happened in the past, to communicate certain information. And that's because data has been misused in the past when it comes to certain identities. So, the sensitivity around that. So, what we try to think about is can we create a structure or a way of including this information, which is needed in these markets for commercial reasons, that will work but there's no obligation on anybody to use it. We've had conversations with the great work that's been done from the Canadian groups. We've tried to make sure that the groups in Latin America have been kept informed and send them all the data, because they also are very interested in identifying content. But what matters most, for example, in Mexico is the languages, because there's constitutional protection for languages and they're trying to work that out. But in the Mexican constitution, also in several Latin American countries, you can't collect information about ethnicity because of past and how that was used in colonial periods to discriminate against people. But they're really interested in the language aspect and how they can make that better, because they're also on a metadata journey, trying to make sure that titles are discoverable and that everybody has an equal opportunity to find the titles. Particularly in education, there
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  are a lotof books that are coming out that feature Indigenous languages. So, there are all the various Maya languages. Nahuatl is another commonly used in Mexico. But from an EDItEUR point of view, we always are wanting to listen to hear what different parts of the commercial supply chain want and why they want it. How are they going to use it? Is it something that would be useful? And is it something that could be displayed publicly at the end? Because there are parts of metadata that you are going to use internally at BookNet or internally at BTLF. A publisher might keep certain information that they will use to communicate or to know how to correctly address somebody. But that's private data that stays within an organisation. What ONIX is for is that message standard. You basically are saying, if I put it into ONIX, I'm happy for it to be made public to a certain extent. So, we also have to bear that in mind. What actually works for the commercial supply chain? But we always listen. We never say absolutely no to anything that fits within the remit of ONIX. And we listen. And the great thing about having national groups and an international body that makes the final decision is we get these really interesting conversations. So, BookNet Canada and BTLF. So, Lauren and Isabelle from BTLF did a wonderful presentation at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2024. And part of that audience came from some of the Scandinavian countries, where they have their own Indigenous group, the Sámi. And they were really interested. And they took those conversations and then they took them back and went to look at their own metadata and said, "Right, these are some of the things that we need to start thinking about." So, this is what's very interesting about these conversations and these listening processes. So, I think I went off on a tangent but... Lauren: No, no, that's fabulous. It did also answer one of the questions that was brought up, which was, has this been developed with only the English and French markets in mind? So, you've definitely answered that as a part of participating in this global standard through EDItEUR. ONIX will support multiple, does support multiple. How many language translations ONIX is there now, Chris, as an indicator of prevalence? Chris: Of ONIX, there aren't many. There's English, French... Hang on. English, French, Spanish, Dutch, German. I'll have a look. You've got Arabic, German, Spanish, Finnish, French, Italian, Norwegian, Turkish and English. Lauren: That's cool. Chris: Because a lot of people who install ONIX then do internal translations in their databases. Thema has 26 languages at the moment because far more visible, far more use of Thema for translations. We'd like to get more translations but not everything because ONIX is quite big and there are a lot of codelists. But sometimes you think it would be nice to have a translation of this codelist because it's very common. So, yeah, and we always welcome translations. But I think possibly because a lot of the people who put ONIX into databases come from the more technical side of things, they sort of understand the English concept and then they do their own versions of what they need.
• 12.
  Lauren: So, ifyou are an undercover tech person who is also dabbling in translation, I hear Chris may want to hear from you. So, maybe we'll drop Chris' email in if you're one of those kind of secret lurkers today. Chris: What we won't do is we won't use AI translation for publicly facing translations. Lauren: That's great. Chris: Because the codes represent a concept, and we need to make sure that concept is understandable in that language. We've played around with AI translations, with Thema and with ONIX, to see. And, for example, we did an AI translation into French because I understand it. And it's quite interesting to see the translation is good. But as we all know, there are terms that we use differently in our industry. So, we have to make sure they're correct. So, somebody who speaks fluent Hindi could come and do a Hindi translation. They could start off using AI, but we would recommend that they then go and review it, because the concept has to make sense. Lauren: Mm-hmm. And also important to note for this type of work that we want to be quite careful that we're preserving and protecting Indigenous worldviews and interests while doing any type of translation. So, I think it's really valuable that there is a kind of stated position on that. I think the next question that I have for you, there was a question about the contributor place code and this new code to identify Indigenous to. Would you mind... I think you had a slide about that. They're referring to a slide. Maybe if you could kind of... You don't have to necessarily display it on the screen. Would you mind kind of demonstrating the difference between how someone practically would use both 12 and 08 on that codelist to, kind of, indicate this duality here and the kind of specific use in this Canadian market? So, both Indigenous to code 12 and 08 for nationality. Chris: Okay, so this is what it looks like in ONIX when you're just using 12. 08 is the code that is citizen of, which is probably very common in Canada, or 11, eligible for geographical marketing. And basically what you would see in ONIX is a repetition of that same structure. You'd see this structure twice. So, the contributor place related would say 08, and that 08 gives a different sense to the CA, to the Canada. Because in 12, we're saying you're Indigenous to Atikamekw, and that is associated with the Canadian market in this sense. But if you put 08 there, the CA becomes... This person is a citizen of Canada. If you put 11, which is eligible for geographical marketing, it means that the Canada means you're eligible for geographical marketing in Canada. Lauren: Yes, yeah. So, this is quite important for those users trying to grapple with this, is that for the purposes of these kind of national market tools, we still want to have that representation of both CA and CAQC in order to identify titles of interest in this market. And we've defined Canadian authors as such as being a quite important piece of information for this market. So, having this opportunity to also have kind of respectful acknowledgement of Indigenous identity adds additional layering to that, which I find really valuable, the multiple language
• 13.
  option here. Ithink this is really helpful. It allows for contributors to work with their data providers, often their publisher, to ensure that that is represented in the way that they would expect to see acknowledged publicly. I'm just looking at the time. I think we have time for a couple more questions. So, if you haven't already, please add any questions you can to either the chat or the Q&A and we'll pick those up. The next question that I'm going to take here, one of the things that we're always thinking about in terms of our market, I would say probably on both sides of the language border, both in French and English Canada, is how small operators, small enterprises, are able to take advantage of some of these changes. Would you be able to talk about, kind of, when ONIX makes a change, or when a new code is introduced, or perhaps when documentation such as this is recommended, what kind of timelines do you not expect but would you encourage even small operators to work with as they ingest all of this new information? Do you have any tips or tricks that you could recommend from both your experience at EDItEUR, as well as when you were a bookseller, or any thoughts on that? Chris: So, the ONIX codelists can be updated every three months, or on a three-month cycle. So, when we update, that means we either add a new code because it's been requested, or we may do some clarification, for example, adding an endonym for a language. We publish those. We make it all available in the technical things, and we make sure that we mail that out to all the people that we know who use ONIX on our ONIX implementers list. And usually, they will try and get that done within the three months when it comes to adding a code to a codelist. Most people who have created databases have done it in a way that makes it quite simple to add codes to most codelists. There are exceptions. Often we find with format, people might have hardcoded certain things in, which makes it more complex. And there can be issues with who can accept what downstream, which can take longer. So, the recommendation that we have, if we've added... So, we've added this code 12 to List 151, and for some publishers or distributors, that could be really important. So, they're going to say to BookNet Canada and to BTLF, "We really want you to use this code." And BookNet Canada and BTLF say, "Don't worry, we're going to be adding this. We're going to support this." But they're also going to want to say to people downstream, "Look, this is really important. This is important for your customers. How long until you can support this information?" The good thing about using the repetition of the contributor place as well, if you're still putting in that that contributor is associated with Canada, with Quebec, based of the downstream partners can just use that bit. They could store the code 12 until they're ready to make use of it. Or when you're sending one of your updates, when they're ready to use it, they can use it then. But I always say to publishers and distributors, if that code is useful for you, start collecting that information, putting it in, and put pressure on your downstream partners. You've got great allies in the Canadian supply chain because you have BookNet and you have BTLF that do a lot of good work and collect your data, which they then make available for those that need it downstream.
• 14.
  Downstream is notalways as easy because some downstream partners have got multiple things that they need to do. But you can say this is a priority. We really think you should be making use of this. I'm trying to be realistic as well as being idealistic, because I would love... For example, <NameAsSubject>. <NameAsSubject> is such a powerful way of communicating structured information about who is this book about. And that doesn't just apply to Indigenous content, that applies to all sorts of different things. And we often hear from retailers, "We're not going to use it because nobody sends it to us." And then we hear publishers saying, "We're not going to use it because nobody uses it yet." Look, one of you start using it so that the other one does. It's like we're not going to build a flood defence because we haven't been flooded yet. We're going to wait until we're underwater kind of thing. So, for something that could be really powerful, like <NameAsSubject>, or making sure that you've got the right Thema codes in, or using the new place contributor relationship, they should be things that go up your priority list and that you make your partners aware of it. Communication is really important. Tell your contributors, tell the writers, tell the illustrators that you're going to put this in so that they also say to bookshops, "Why aren't you making use of this?" Because you have great allies with the people who are creating the content, because they want to see their books visible and discoverable as well. And if they're part of the conversation about what information should be included and how that should be included, they can also go to their local independent bookshops. Independent bookshops are brilliant. They're really good at listening to the people that come into them. They do an amazing job, booksellers. So, make them aware of it. Booksellers are doing so many different things. If you make them aware, in fact, look, you can find this information. BTLF and BookNet Canada will make it available to you. Go and use that information. Lauren: And that's quite persuasive, what you've said there, that if the information you're already collecting it, or you're on a pathway to collect some of this information for the books or for your contributors, having those conversations early with your downstream data partners and data recipients about that you are collecting this data or you have this data, it's quite persuasive to present that you have X number of records ready to go should they consider ingesting this. And sometimes you're right. This stuff does take a bit of time, where data might start flowing downstream, and perhaps it doesn't get used or it gets bubbled up on, say, retailer websites or at library websites right away, and they're waiting for, you know, a certain threshold of records to contain the information. But more information does make the case. It's quite persuasive, and I really appreciate all of your efforts to really educate me and my colleagues, and we are working on this with you, but also everyone here today. And I thank you so much, Chris, for joining us. And to our audience, thank you for joining us. We would love it if you would be able to provide some feedback on the session. We're going to be having a link emailed to you, as well as dropped in the chat, to provide a survey link. If you wouldn't mind taking a couple of minutes to fill it out, we'll also send this by email, as I mentioned, as well as a recording of the session as soon as it is available.
• 15.
  And as waskind of teased earlier by Chris, we have a session next week. We invite you to join that. It's called "E.U. Regulations for the North American Book Supply Chain," as well as another session on Thema and how Indigenous content can be shared through Thema. Those are both scheduled for next week. And this mini series here on what Thema can do will wrap this all up on January 22. You can find all of those links at bnctechforum.ca. And finally, thank you, Chris. Thank you, audience. And thank you to the Department of Canadian Heritage for their support through the Canada Book Fund. Have a wonderful day, everyone. Thank you.