ONIX for Serials - User Guide for SRN message is now available

London, UK  March, 2007.  EDItEUR, the international group coordinating
development of the standards infrastructure for electronic commerce in the
book and serials industries, is pleased to announce the availability of a
detailed User Guide for the ONIX for Serials SRN (Serials Release
Notification) message format.  Information about this format can be found
at http://www.editeur.org/onixserials/ONIX_SRN09.html, with links to the
new User Guide at the foot of the page.

ONIX for Serials is a family of XML formats for communicating information
about serial products and subscription information, using the design
principles and many of the elements defined in ONIX for Books.

The SRN message is used for communicating information about the physical
publication or electronic availability of one or more serial
releases.  Content suppliers, content consumers and intermediaries will all
find it advantageous to send and/or receive Serial Release
Notifications.  Such notifications will serve to advertise the availability
of new content, will help in minimizing unnecessary claims, and will make
possible the automatic maintenance of precise holdings in online catalogs
and link resolvers.

Currently the SRN message announces the release of serial issues and
provides issue-level metadata.  During the summer, two more SRN messages
will be made available, containing metadata about content items within the
released issues.

The development of ONIX for Serials has been a joint project of EDItEUR and
NISO, the US National Information Standards Organization.  Further
information about ONIX for Serials, including the XML schemas, may be found
on the EDItEUR website (www.editeur.org/onixserials.html).