BIC has today published new Best Practice Guidelines for Recipients of Price and Availability Data. These provide practical guidance on the obligations on data recipients to process and redistribute incoming data quickly and systematically, to protect the integrity of publishers' metadata, and to maintain proper systems and audit trails.

The contents of the paper are largely based on similar guidelines published last year by the Book Industry Study Group in New York but it has been extensively restructured by BIC's Price and Availability Working Group, chaired by Gabrielle Wallington of Waterstone's, to reflect aspects of UK practice.

Peter Kilborn, Executive Director of BIC, says: "Because of the UK trade's historical dependence on data aggregators, BIC has in the past concentrated its work in this area on the data suppliers rather than the recipients. As publishers increasingly distribute their metadata more widely, there is a clear need to establish the ground rules which recipients of data should follow, both to ensure that the most accurate data is available in the supply chain as quickly as possible but also to reinforce the principle that publishers' metadata is the most authoritative source of information and must be safeguarded."

Click here to view Guidelines.

Best wishes.

Peter Kilborn
Book Industry Communication
39/41 North Road
London N7 9DP
Telephone/fax +44 (0)20 7607 9021