BISG Publishes Document on Identifying Digital Book Content

The Book Industry Study Group Inc. (BISG) has announced the publication of “The Identification of Digital Book Content,” a new document exploring how digital publications should be identified. The publication was commissioned by the BISG and the Book Industry Communication (BIC), a London-based industry organization, and written by industry consultant Michael Holdsworth. According to the BISG, the publication is intended to stimulate debate throughout the book industry on how digital book content should be identified, and to encourage the development and implementation of identification standards for such content as more books are made available in digital form.

“The idea for a discussion document arose from a meeting held at BookExpo [in 2007] in which many publishers, retailers and providers of digital distribution services emphasized the need for clear industry standards in this important area,” says Michael Healy, executive director, BISG. “We hope Michael Holdsworth’s clear analysis and recommendations will provoke discussion that will lead to the development of such standards.”

“The international book industry has organized much of its supply chain around one very successful identifier—the ISBN. This important new document from BISG and BIC will stimulate debate about the standards we need to ensure [that] digital publications are discovered easily and traded efficiently. I look forward to feedback on its findings and to using that feedback in the [Book Industry Standards and Communications] Identifiers Committee to develop best-practice guidelines later this year,” says Laura Dawson, an independent book industry consultant and chair of the Identifiers Committee.

The document is available online www.BISG.org/docs/DigitalIdentifiers_07Jan08.pdf