Subject: [NGC4LIB] Call for comments: OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft, an Atom-based standard for ebook distribution

From: Ed Summers <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu, 13 May 2010 12:21:23 -0400

Folks involved in the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS)
effort are seeking feedback on the latest version of the spec [1] from
the publishing and library communities--and specifically from the
library-tech oriented code4lib subscribers. The goal is to gather
enough feedback for a v1.0 release mid-2010.

If you haven't run across it yet, OPDS is a simple pattern for using
Atom to make "catalogs" of ebooks (and their metadata) available.
Personally, I think it is a critical piece of infrastructure for the
rapidly expanding ebook marketplace, that allows reading devices and
publishers/distributors to participate in a shared and collaborative
ecosystem that is built on the web. Incidentally, I think OPDS also
showcases how to use Atom to share metadata about books as well, akin
to Jangle [2]. It also bears a striking resemblance to the Google Book
API [3]. In short, if you publishing or consume ebooks on the web you
should definitely take a look.

More information regarding OPDS, and where to send your
comments/suggestions/fixes is below in the announcement from Keith
Fahlgren. Of course, discussion on code4lib is welcome as well.

//Ed

The OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft [1] is now ready for your review and we'd
love to get your feedback and comments. Please submit any and all
critiques or comments to the openpub mailing list [4] or add an issue
[5] by 19 May 2010.

What are OPDS Catalogs?

OPDS stands for "Open Publication Distribution System" and OPDS
Catalogs enable the aggregation, distribution, and discovery of books,
journals, and other digital content by any user, from any source, in
any electronic format, on any device. The OPDS Catalogs specification
is based on the Atom syndication format and prioritizes simplicity and
speed.

Is this vaporware?

Nope. The OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft is based on a lot of existing,
in-production software and collaboration between ebook reading
systems, publishers, and distributors. Feedbooks, for example, already
distributes more than 2 million ebooks every month using its OPDS
Catalogs (http://feedbooks.com/catalog.atom) and ebook readers like
Aldiko, Stanza, QuickReader, FBReader, Ibis Reader, and others already
support the evolving specification. Publishers and libraries have been
early adopters of the OPDS Catalogs as the specification has evolved
toward 0.9 as well. Some highlights:

* Internet Archive: 1.8 million free books [6]
* O'Reilly Media: hundreds of technical ebooks [7]
* PragPub Magazine, from The Pragmatic Programmers [8]
* Smashwords [9]

OPDS Catalogs are the first component in the Internet Archive’s
BookServer Project [10]

[1] http://code.google.com/p/openpub/wiki/CatalogSpecDraft
[2] http://jangle.org/
[3] http://code.google.com/apis/books/docs/gdata/developers_guide_protocol.html#SearchResultFeed
[4] http://groups.google.com/group/openpub
[5] http://code.google.com/p/openpub/issues/entry
[6] http://bookserver.archive.org/catalog/
[7] http://catalog.oreilly.com/aldiko/main.xml
[8] http://pragprog.com/magazines.opds
[9] http://www.smashwords.com/atom
[10] http://www.archive.org/bookserver