At BookNet, we're big fans of Thema, recommending that Canadian data senders and receivers support both BISAC Subject Headings and Thema Subject Categories to fulsomely represent book products for sale in Canada. While we still love BISAC, the dominant subject classification system in the North American book market, we appreciate Thema’s unique system of subject and qualifier codes which, when used correctly, can communicate more granular and specific information about a book’s content. This granularity allows data senders and data recipients to share and display information about a book that represents a more diverse and inclusive range of content ripe for discovery in a marketplace that demands it.

Announcing version 1.6

EDItEUR proudly announced the release of Thema version 1.6 in November 2024. There are around 131 new subject categories and 411 new qualifiers. As with all previous Thema updates, this is an additions-only update: all versions of Thema remain fully backward-compatible with their predecessors, and no existing category has changed its meaning — though there are some minor updates to the exact wording to improve clarity and aid in translation.

Key additions include:

Qualifiers for 'the literature of a particular place' (these form groupings of books that are part of the ‘culture’ of a place, unrelated to the setting of a story, the nationality of the author, and the country of publication)
New qualifiers to highlight books about or in support of individual UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGS)
Expansion of the range of popular fiction genres categories, particularly within romance
Greater geographical coverage of Ukraine, Australia, and Canada

To celebrate the release of Thema version 1.6, BookNet’s Tech Forum team hosted a webinar with Chris Saynor of EDItEUR and Isabelle Gaudet-Labine of BTLF to share “Updates to Thema and their applications to the Canadian market.” You can watch the recording below:

Moreover, EDItEUR’s online browser has been updated to version 1.6 and this is now available at the usual address.

Standards behind the scenes

Members of the International Thema Steering Committee approved the release of Thema version 1.6 at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2024. A straightforward motion at a meeting cannot testify to the hours of effort put forth by Chris Saynor at EDItEUR to collect and interpret feedback from EDItEUR members and Thema implementers across the world. BookNet is grateful for the thoughtful and thorough approach Chris has applied to shepherding version 1.6 through the gate, including hours coordinating feedback from Canadian partners in BTLF and BookNet to address Canadian market needs. The EDItEUR staff team, Graham Bell and Chris Saynor, have stayed on top of an ever-evolving regulatory environment and have sustained an aggressive series of releases since the last Thema release in 2022.