Verzeichnis Lieferbarer Bücher (VLB) is the central platform for the automated exchange of product information in the German-language book industry. Based on global standards, on whose establishment and development the VLB has a significant influence, the system provides retailers and other customers with optimised metadata on approximately 2.5 million publications from more than 22,000 publishing firms.

Under the international Metabooks brand, the VLB technology is offering publishing houses and booksellers in Brazil a comprehensive infrastructure for uniform metadata management for the first time.

The people behind the VLB

With VLB, we are part of the infrastructure for the book industry. As a data hub, we move an abundance of data every day in order to provide the book industry with a central, independent database. As data is our passion we work with complete enthusiasm for this objective.

Data exchange in the book industry

In 2015, MVB transferred the VLB database to a completely new technical infrastructure. Over 80 servers process up to 4,000,000 million access as well as an average of 35,000 changes and new registrations every day. Additionally, around 7,000 files, such as covers, reading samples and other publication enrichments from various sources, are fed into the system daily. High-performing interfaces allow a seamless integration of the VLB into software solutions for booksellers and publishing houses.

Since the beginning of 2017, the VLB has been able to process data in ONIX Version 3.0. It is thus one of the first catalogue databases in Germany to allow complete data mapping from ONIX 2.1 into the new ONIX version.