The following are requirements for publishers when providing files to NNELS.
Metadata
Formats
NNELS accepts metadata for books in both MARC and ONIX formats:
- ONIX 2.1 - both short and reference form; short form is preferable
- MARC (.mrc or .mrk) and MARC XML
The inclusion of accessibility information in ONIX is highly recommended. ONIX allows the accessibility of the book to be described in a highly granular way. ONIX Codelist 196 (e-publication accessibility details) allows publishers to identify those accessibility attributes that may be of importance to specific print-impaired readers.
Fields
In order to facilitate discovery and access to your content, NNELS requires that, at a minimum, you include the following fields in your metadata:
- title of book
- creator of book
- publication details including name of publisher, location of publisher, date of publication
- language of work
- summary/abstract
- subject terms (text only; Library of Congress Subject Headings or FAST are preferable)
The below fields are also recommended:
- accessibility features and hazards
- whether or not the author is Canadian
- genre terms (text only)
- audience (adult, juvenile, etc.)
- literary format (fiction, non-fiction, poetry, etc.)
Filename
It is required that all submitted ebooks or audiobooks have a filename that contains both the title of the book and an identifier. The identifier is usually the book's ISBN. Please do not use punctuation in the filename, and use an underscore to separate words.
Example: Following_the_last_wolves_9781553654209.epub
File Transfer
If you are transfering less than 30GB of data, you can deliver your files to the NNELS FTP. When transfering files, please throttle your uploads to 20 megabit (2 megabytes per second) max from 09:00-17:00 PST.
If you are transfering over 30GB of data, you will need to mail us your files on a harddrive.
For large batches of content that include files from multiple publishers, please deliver your files with the following structure:
anydirectory/Publisher/Title_of_book_identifier.xxx
Example:
/eBooks/Greystone_Books/Following_the_last_wolves_9781553654209.epub
Minimal Accessibility Requirements
All EPUBs included for distribution in NNELS must meet the following minimal requirements:
- No reading system accessibility options are disabled (no DRM):
The enabling or disabling of accessibility features lies with content producers (for example, DRM restrictions). To meet the criteria, do not bundle or distribute your publications with restrictions on them that would disable access to the content by screen readers, etc. Note that provision of any significant part of the textual content as images (i.e. as pictures of text, rather than as text) inevitably prevents use of these accessibility options.
The following features are highly preferable, when applicable. For further details, refer to ONIX List 196 (e-publication accessibility details).
- Table of contents navigation
- Index navigation
- Reading order
- Short alternative descriptions (usually provided via alt attributes)
- Full alternative descriptions (usually provided via aria-describedby)
- Accessible math and chem content (i.e. through the use of MathML and ChemML)
- Print-equivalent page numbering (i.e. through the use of a Page-list)
- Language tagging provided, including for non-English text (i.e. via the HTML or XML lang attribute)
Conformance with the requirements of EPUB Accessibility Spec 1.0 is highly desirable.
Questions
If you have questions about the above requirements, please contact the Content Coordinator.