Call for comments: OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft (open catalog standard ebooks)

[zelda_pinwheel]

Keith Falgren has announced that the 0.9 draft of the open catalog standard, OPDS, is now ready for review, and they are looking for comments and feedback. OPDS is an open standard format for book distribution; it's the equivalent of epub for book catalogs. It allows people to easily create their own catalogs of books based on any criteria pertinent to them, and easily share those catalogs with anyone.

OPDS is already being used by sites and applications like the Internet Archive, feedbooks, InkMesh, Smashwords, Aldiko, Stanza, LibraryThing, Goodreads, our own dpierron's calibre2opds...

Here is the email :

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

Hi,

The OPDS Catalogs 0.9 draft at
http://code.google.com/p/openpub/wiki/CatalogSpecDraft 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 (http://groups.google.com/group/openpub) or add an issue
(http://code.google.com/p/openpub/issues/entry) 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,
http://bookserver.archive.org/catalog/)
* O'Reilly Media (hundreds of technical ebooks,
http://catalog.oreilly.com/aldiko/main.xml)
* PragPub Magazine, from The Pragmatic Programmers
(http://pragprog.com/magazines.opds)
* Smashwords (http://www.smashwords.com/atom)


OPDS Catalogs are the first component in the Internet Archive’s
BookServer Project (http://www.archive.org/bookserver).


Thanks for your feedback,
Keith Fahlgren & the openpub community

Related :
The Book Server project on the Internet Archive
"Powered by OPDS" on the feedbooks blog
dpierron's calibre2opds, a system for generating an opds catalog from calibre which works with Stanza
Adobe Teams Up With Stanza to Create Open EBook Catalog Standard

[Valloric]

Sigh... yet another specification to read...

[zelda_pinwheel]

Originally Posted by Valloric

Sigh... yet another specification to read...

admit it, somewhere deep down you *like* that. (either that or you're a terrible masochist !)

[gollu]

Well, call me whatever you will but i don't get it. Is there some definite site to go and see some book catalog? Is it user related or is it for the big companies to use?

[zelda_pinwheel]

hi gollu, you can see opds catalogs in a lot of sites, and you can even make your own ; there are a few sites listed in the article above, such as feedbooks (this is how feedbooks can be integrated to the stanza or aldiko reading application, or the GoodReads site, for example). if you go to goodreads, on the page of any pd or cc book which is available on feedbooks, for example here http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...-and-prejudice you'll see a button "download" ; that is the feedbooks opds catalogue integrated into the site.

another use is demonstrated by calibre2opds, which allows you to create an opds catalogue of your own books in calibre, import that to stanza on your iphone, and have easy access to any of your books at any moment.

you might want to read the feedbooks blog post i linked for more explanation.