Best Practices for Product Metadata

Best Practices for Product Metadata: Guide for North American Data Senders and Receivers provides detailed instructions on improving the accuracy of product data throughout the supply chain in order to increase efficiency between trading partners, and to make content more discoverable. Developed in cooperation with BookNet Canada, the BISG Metadata Committee updated the guide in May 2015, completely restructuring the document to emphasize ONIX 3.0 and adding new ONIX 3.0 best practices and examples.

Prior to this update, the committee published a substantial revision in September 2013, combining what had been two handbooks—one for data senders and one for data receivers—into a single document. This revision added a wealth of information on metadata for digital products.

Part of the Metadata Committee's work to create the Best Practices guide was informed by the findings from BISG's research on The Development, Use, and Modification of Book Product Metadata, which mapped the flow of metadata across the publishing supply chain.