BIC spent the better part of a decade working out the detail of the Industry Returns Initiative proposed by KPMG in the late 90s; and with OUP adopting it a month or so ago it has now probably gone about as far as it is going towards a universal UK standard. Although implementation was much…
We have recently completed our first season of training courses: three one-day sessions on Metadata and ONIX, BIC EDI standards, and ONIX and XML, held in collaboration with the Publishing Training Centre. For a first attempt, we are delighted with the results. Two of the courses were sold out, the other nearly so; and the…
We have just announced the planned launch of IBIC for next October. IBIC is the name we have adopted for a new multilingual version of the BIC standard subject categories, on which we have been working for the past few months. Readers of this blog will know how important we believe it is that there…
As you can see, we have redesigned the BIC web site. We hope you will like it and quickly find your way around it. In fact the overall structure of the site is unchanged, as it seems to be serving its primary purpose well. We would welcome any comments or suggestions.
I’m afraid the blog has been in abeyance too long. The main event – and preoccupation – of the past month or so has been the moving of the BIC office. We are now installed in the CILIP building on the corner of Store Street and Ridgmount Street in the heart of Bloomsbury, and very…
Attending an event on ‘new trends’ seems apt at this time, just as everyone is ramping up on their Frankfurt preparation. We took away much more than 10 lessons from this jam-packed morning – but thought 10 might just whet your appetite for now. Ruth Jones (Publisher Business Development, Ingram Content Group): Richard Orme (Chief…
The end of the holiday season is a good time to take stock; and maybe to cast a fresh eye over the book industry scene. For BIC, it means the opportunity to reassess priorities. There are signs that the hype around digital may be dying down. That would be a good thing, provided that the…
This is the time of year when we all try to get things finished – before taking on new tasks after the holidays. In BIC’s case we have been able to conclude two longstanding pieces of work: a best practice guide for recipients of price and availability data; and our guidelines for implementing the new…
Price and availability data: it ought to be such a simple matter, just a question of telling the supply chain that a price has changed or a title has gone out of stock. However, it is anything but – as the P & A working party we set up recently has been finding out. To…