Introduction to OPDS: key concepts and ideas

1. Understanding OPDS
Hadrien Gardeur
@Hadrien
Feedbooks

2. Goal
Creating a new architecture using
common, open standards that permits
people to find, buy, acquire, and read
books from any source, on any device,
using many different ebook applications.

3. Short Version
Read anything, anywhere.

5. State of the ecosystem
> 20 OPDS clients
Mostly used to distribute e-books
> 10 million users
… thousands with their own catalogs
Specification and online validation

6. Fundamental
Concepts

7. Navigation / Acquisition
OPDS is based on resources and collections
A collection aggregates resources
Two kinds of resources :
Navigation link
Catalog entry
… for two kinds of collections :
Navigation
Acquisition

8. Acquisition link
Acquisition in OPDS means accessing a publication
associated to a catalog entry
Multiple acquisition scenarios :
Open Access
Sale
Lending
Subscription
Extract
Undefined

9. Fundamental
Structures

10. Catalog
Catalogs are discoverable and can be shared
We use catalogs to…
discover
browse
search
acquire content
Catalogs are meant to organize large collections,
enable content providers to curate them, provide
an integrated experience for the end user

11. Shelf
A shelf is where I store my content
Shelfs can be…
specific to a catalog
global or aggregated
public or private
synchronized
A shelf enables the user to find and read
previously acquired content anywhere

12. Callback
A callback is a message
It contains…
how to acquire the content
metadata
location of the shelf & catalog
service discovery information
A callback is a message between the content
provider and the reading environment.
It opens the door to the reading ecosystem.

13. Discover OPDS at
http://opds-spec.org