Transcript: New from BookNet Canada for 2026: Loan Stars

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Tim Middleton: Hello, and welcome. Thanks for tuning in to this year’s BiblioShare talk at Tech Forum 2026. My name is Tim Middleton, and I am a product manager for BNC BiblioShare here at BookNet Canada.

Before I get started with my short presentation, I will take this opportunity 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), the Métis, as well as the unceded and ancestral territory of the Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh peoples, the original nations and peoples of the lands we now call Beeton, Guelph, Halifax, Thunder Bay, Toronto, Vancouver, Vaughan, and Windsor.

We endorse the Calls to Action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and support an ongoing shift from gatekeeping to space-making in the book industry.

This year, I am just going to be presenting the BiblioShare by the Numbers portion of our annual BiblioShare Tech Forum presentation, where in this segment we look at, well, numbers. My colleagues Stephanie Small and Shuvanjan Karmaker will be presenting on other areas that the BiblioShare team has been working on this past year, following my quick tour of the stats.

So, to begin, we continue to accept and process version 2.1 of the ONIX data into BiblioShare, while at the same time focusing on migrating the supply chain to version 3.x of the standard. I will be referring to 3.0 and 3.1 as 3.x. The standard has been available now since about 2009, and the 2.1 version has been frozen at Code 636. So, all the improvements that you’re seeing in metadata will now be in version 3.0 or 3.1 of ONIX.

In 2025, the BiblioShare ONIX 2.1 dataset grew by about 217,000 records. And this is on par pretty much with the growth that we saw last year. So, that 2.1 set isn’t growing, it’s pretty much flat. However, as we’ve been hoping and expecting, the BiblioShare 3.x dataset saw a big jump in 2025. There were close to 500,000 records added to this dataset, a bump of almost 500,000 over last year. So, this is happening, and it only took about 10 to 15 years. And that is about the speed of things in ONIX land.

Now, in this slide, we’re looking at what we call, what I refer to as the daily average intake of data for both new records and updated records in BiblioShare. Because, don’t forget, bibliographic data is not static. So, you send us a record we don’t have, and then you send Delta updates, price changes, or publishing status. And that’s what’s updated. So, we have this data coming in constantly into BiblioShare, pretty much 24/7.

So, as I said, bibliographic data is not static, at least not until the thing it is describing is no longer available. And here, we can see that in the year 2025, that the 2.1 data coming in is lower than previous years. And we can see this as signaling a move away from 2.1 data. And when we look at the 3.0 data, we see that that data set is on its way up.

So, here, we’re seeing on average new records per day coming in 9,414 new records per day, and an average of updated records 10,784. It is of note, as we watch this data set grow, that we see the average new records that we receive daily for the 3.1 version dataset is almost equal to the average of updated records that we received. That means we are getting a lot of new providers sending us their 3.x data now. We still have a ways to go, but these two signals from the different data sets is a pretty clear signal that we are on our way to a full migration of ONIX to ONIX 3.x in our supply chain.

In 2025, all told, we created 103 new or newish accounts in BiblioShare. And I say newish because in some cases we’ve just had to add a 3.0 account for a previous 2.1 provider. But this is a good bump of about 67% over last year. And when we look at the breakdown of publisher and supplier ONIX accounts, they show us we are still adding more 2.1 accounts than 3.0. But 3.0 is going to take over this year with 3.0 announcements coming out of major players like Amazon and Ingram as they discontinue their support of the 2.1 version data.

Another move, and this will be later talked about by Shuvanjan, is that we are migrating our web form, ONIX creation platform, from 2.1 to 3.0. And Shuvanjan will give you all the news on that.

What continues to amaze us on the BiblioShare front at BookNet is the volume of consumption of our web services and use of Shopify plugin. We had 62 new accounts established last year for either using our web services, so those web services include everything from image covers to the ONIX 2.1 data record, ONIX 3.0 record, and a lot of other services that we provide. And so, last year, we saw web services being used to support either their own solutions or the Shopify stores.

This 50% increase shows the continual interest in and need for this bibliographic service in the Canadian supply chain. And we continue to build the holdings in BiblioShare of supporting materials. So, here, we see that we added 6% to our cover images database. So, we now have over 4 million publicly accessible covers on hand.

Interior images, it’s the same story. This is one of the staple assets as publishers will know, and perhaps consumers as well. It’s one of the staple assets to support book retailers and consumers making buying decisions. Our holdings in interior images grew by a whopping 24% in 2025. The interesting thing is that while we are almost at a million interior images, the actual number of distinct titles that we have with interiors available is only about 167,000, just above 167,000. So, the rough math here is that there are on average five interiors per book. Maybe a best practice is hidden in those numbers somewhere. But an average of five interiors is what we take away from the number of EANs that have provided interiors.

Author images continues to trickle along. So, people are still looking for these to add to their web content. And our author image dataset grew by 3% in 2025. So, we’re up to around 11,354 now. And here is a look at how the rest of the BiblioShare supporting materials database is growing. So, we get samples, reader guides, table of contents, teacher’s guides, and back covers. We are seeing a blip in the samples and excerpts area that reminds me of the explosive growth of the first couple of years we introduced storage and usage for those holdings.

And of course, it is always interesting to see what kind of data and how much of it we are continuously processing, but equally interesting is this question. Is the data being used? And who is using all of this data? So, once again, our web services were very busy.

Here, we see that we had over 190 million requests come into the BiblioShare web services in 2025. This 190 million number excludes any in-house use of the APIs. I share a little bit of those numbers later in the next slide. But we do use the exact same APIs as we make available to the public for our products, like Bibli-O-Matic, CataList, covers and sales data, etc. We do see the value of the data, and we hope that our end users do as well. This year, we have added 63 new accounts to the web service services.

And here is our list of the active web services and what is being pulled. In red is the column for 2025. And you can see, compare it to the previous three years going back to 2022. Obviously, ONIX requests are still the big one. I do like seeing the image info, service growth, and that means people are leveraging the timestamp that comes along with that image info. And here, again, we can see that big jump in interior images. So, not only have we received more interior images, but our requests for those interiors also went up in 2025, at least over 2024 and 2023. And then we’d have to look at 2022. We may have introduced some service at that point that makes that number so high.

So, these are our top 25 users of the BiblioShare web services. Actually, I’ve included our top 26 because I just like to keep things even. But the cool thing about this list is that it shows the flexibility of the services. These users in this list are made up of solution providers like ReaderBound, in-house solutions like Whitehots, Shopify users, publisher sites, distributor sites, retail sites, and author sites.

And of course, you may have noticed or you may not have that I left in the BookNet products in this list. So, this should give you an idea of the spread of usage and point out that BookNet is certainly not the only heavy user of the BiblioShare data. However, we do see the value of this data just like every other service provider out there.

And this year, I just wanted to mention a couple of services that we haven’t built in the past, but we’re just continuing to build up usage of these services. First off is the title and author search. So, this is a keyword search that is available for people to provide some keywords from the title and the author, and bring back a JSON formatted response from our API.

And then we are very close to launching what we refer to as our accessibility API, in which we will be returning any of the accessibility checkmarks that are in the ONIX data for record from publishers who will be able to slice and dice the return of that data either by publisher or by the accessibility code itself. So, it will be a nice service to have available just to do a quick grab of all the titles and what their accessibility data looks like.

So, that was a quick tour through some of the data that we keep an eye on here in BiblioShare land and that was 2025. As we have mentioned before, we are very focused on getting a fuller complement of ONIX 3.0 data. And with that focus, we are also in the process of migrating solutions like BNC Webform as well as rebuilding our BiblioShare platform.

So, to give you a window into those two projects, Stephanie Small and Shuvanjan Karmaker are going to share with you some details about both the new BiblioShare version platform and the new Webform promotion. Thank you very much, and hope to see you next year.

Stephanie Small: Hello, everyone. My name is Stephanie Small, and I’m one of the product coordinators on the BiblioShare team. As you know, bibliographic data is at the core of what we do here at BookNet. Keeping up with evolving bibliographic standards means recognising opportunities to improve our products to better meet the needs of the Canadian market. To that end, we’re pleased to be undertaking an exciting redevelopment of the BiblioShare system.

The current BiblioShare platform has served us well, but it was built for a different reality. Core processes and workflows were optimised for ONIX 2.1, but that standard hasn’t been current for over a decade now. Major retailers are starting to require more up-to-date metadata. ONIX 3 is the new reality. But ONIX schemas and codelists are constantly changing. They need to in order to make sure they’re serving the evolving needs of the supply chain. They might include critical updates that allow trading partners to meet legislative and regulatory requirements in a variety of markets.

For example, new regulations on product safety and accessibility in the European Union require data providers to communicate details that can only be handled in the more recent versions of ONIX. All of this means it’s more important than ever for the Canadian supply chain to have access to a bibliographic data aggregation system that is designed to natively support ONIX 3, but that’s also flexible enough to adapt as the standard continues to evolve. This is the goal of the redevelopment project.

The new BiblioShare system is our next-generation platform designed to deliver high-quality metadata to the Canadian supply chain, and to do so quickly and efficiently. It’s a made-in-Canada solution that will be built by our talented team of in-house developers, a team that has extensive experience designing systems to ingest, maintain, and display locally sourced ONIX metadata.

It will come as no surprise that this redevelopment project is a massive undertaking. We need to tackle a wide range of requirements, but we also need to ensure our current services are not interrupted. To handle that, we’ve divided the work into three phases.

Phase 1 consists of designing the architecture of the system and building end-to-end data processing functionality. It will also include internal tools that can be used by BookNet staff to monitor metadata files and the records within them as they move through the system. Work completed in this phase may be less visible to you on the client side, as you won’t have access to a new platform to explore. But we expect you’ll see processing speed improvements as part of this phase.

Phase 2 consists of extending the system to support external users. That’s you. You’ll have access to some self-serve tools, as well as visibility into processing status for your ONIX files and product records. It also includes functionality to process and manage non-ONIX assets like images and samples, as well as building integrations with other BookNet products and services.

Phase 3 consists of refining and extending functionality built in the previous two phases. We’ll continue to focus on systems integrations and some nice-to-have features to improve usability. By the end of this phase, we should have a fully functional new system. If you’re curious about where we are now, I can share that Phase 1 work is well underway.

The modern system that results from all this work will provide many benefits for data providers and recipients. First, we’ll have better support for ONIX 3 and the ability to adapt as new schemas and codelists are introduced. Second, we’ll have faster end-to-end processing that increases efficiency while still maintaining high-quality data that you can trust. Third, improved administrative tools will help the BiblioShare team troubleshoot issues that arise, and to help serve you better. And finally, you’ll have better visibility into your own data and its status as it moves through the system.

We are dedicated to making the transition to the new platform as smooth as possible for all existing users. Most accounts and users will be automatically migrated to the new system when the time is right, and we’re prioritising work that keeps data flowing with minimal or no intervention from our accounts.

We are looking forward to all the improvements that BiblioShare 2 will offer in its new incarnation, and we hope you are, too. We’ll be communicating information about our rollout plans in the coming months. But in the meantime, if you have any questions, comments or concerns about this redevelopment project or ideas to share, reach out to the BiblioShare team at [email protected]. Thank you.

Shuvanjan Karmaker: Welcome to Webform for ONIX Creation. My name is Shuvanjan Karmaker, product coordinator at BookNet Canada. Webform is an easy-to-use platform for creating, managing, and sharing quality book metadata. Adhering to EDItEUR and BookNet Canada standards, it helps publishers produce accurate ONIX files that trading partners can rely on. By simplifying metadata workflows, Webform supports better discoverability, smoother data exchange, and an efficient path from publisher to market.

Webform is designed for small presses, publishers, museums, universities, and independent authors. Anyone who needs to share clear, reliable book metadata with the supply chain through BiblioShare, but may not have the capacity to build complex ONIX files from scratch, it provides a practical, accessible way to produce standards-compliant metadata that trading partners can trust.

Our latest updates include a new interface. It is a more user-friendly interface, and has an advanced form that allows clients to add multiple BISAC and Thema codes, multiple product form details, multiple contributors, multiple prices for different markets, detailed marketing information, add various media assets, EPUB details, and transmit ONIX and assets to trading partners via FTP. And much more to allow users to take advantage of full scope of ONIX.

The Canadian book industry has now largely adopted the latest version of the ONIX standard, ONIX 3. And we have completed our migration to now supporting only ONIX 3 catalogs. Support for the ONIX 2.1 standard was sunset back in 2014. ONIX 3 has been the current standard since, but has taken the industry till now to fully adopt this new standard. We are now at a point where the majority of businesses is conducted using ONIX 3 as the preferred standard.

ONIX 3 reduces redundant methods of providing the same data elements, and supports the full range of metadata necessary to properly support ebook formats, including accessibility. As an international standard, its market and supply blocks also enables precise, scalable handling of territories, suppliers, prices, and publication dates for multiple regions and territories within a single record.

Thank you for listening to Webform for ONIX. For more information, please visit booknetcanada.ca.

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