Purpose

The purpose of this document is to describe the format in which book catalog information is expected to be received.

File Format

The files are expected to be Tab Delimited Files. That is:

• each line shall contain one and only one record
• fields shall be separated by <TAB>

There are two classes of fields:

required

- The required fields must have values in them and the values must be legal.

1. UniqueID      (product number)
2. ProductType      (a variety of choices for this field: book|digital or mp3|digital or book_mp3_bundle|bundle or software_digtal|digital)
3. Title      (maximum 48 characters)
4. Price      (no spaces or dollar signs)
5. Blurb      (maximum 700 characters)
6. Pages      (number only)
7. GraphicName      (exact name of accompanying JPG or GIF image)
8. Subjects      (separated by a comma or pipe; e.g., Language Arts|Math|Science)
9. Grades      (separated by a comma or pipe; e.g., 1,2,3)
10. Author      (one or more)
11. ISBN      (10 digit or 13 digit)

Some examples are in order.

• If you have Author info but no ISBN info (and no extra info) then your file only needs 9 columns (the 8 required columns plus the Author column)
• If you have ISBN data but no Author data then your file needs 10 columns (the required 8, plus the empty Author column and the ISBN column)
• If you have 2 extra fields (Keywords and Year) but no optional data then you still need to put the empty optional columns in place so your file needs 12 columns (the required 8, the optional 2 and the extra 2)

extra

- The publisher may include as many extra fields as they desire. The point of including these fields is to pass on any information which may be useful at the time of classification of the books. Some examples are: Series, ReadingLevel, Keywords but you can include any number of extras columns (up to 15) and they can have any names you want. These extra fields may contain multiple values and if so, the values should be separated by the pipe character (|).

Examples

Please note that the files should not have the field names in the first line. The html tables below do have field names for clarity, though the downloadable examples do not.

Example of data with all required fields (download sample)

required
ID	ProductType	Title	Price	Blurb	Pages	GraphicName	Subjects	Grades	Author	ISBN
ABC1234	book|digital	My Life	12.99	This is where a detailed description of the product goes. Maximum 700 characters.	24	abc1234.gif	Language Arts	K,1,2,3	Anon	12312312
ABC1235	book|digital	Travels with My Pants	17.95	This is where a detailed description of the product goes. Maximum 700 characters.	397	abc1235.gif	Social Studies	4,5,6	Gus McGurkel	12312313
ABC1236	book|digital	Fish, Pants and Other Things	19.25	This is where a detailed description of the product goes. Maximum 700 characters.	98	abc1236.gif	Science	K,1,2,3	Jack McGurkel	12312314

Example of data with extras (download sample)

required											extras
ID	ProductType	Title	Price	Blurb	Pages	GraphicName	Subjects	Grades	Author	ISBN	Keywords
ABC1234	book|digital	My Life	12.99	This is where a detailed description of the product goes. Maximum 700 characters.	24	abc1234.gif	Language Arts	K|1|2|3|4|5	Anon	12312312	A Memoir
ABC1235	book|digital	Travels with My Pants	17.95	This is where a detailed description of the product goes. Maximum 700 characters.	397	abc1235.gif	Social Studies|Language Arts	10|11|12	Gus McGurkel	12312313	On the lam in the late 20th century
ABC1236	book|digital	Fish, Pants and Other Things	19.25	This is where a detailed description of the product goes. Maximum 700 characters.	98	abc1236.gif	Science	7|8|9	Jack McGurkel	12312314	A Retrospective

Click here to download an Excel template for your data. (New version January 10/08)

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