Findings Meeting for the Identification of e-Books and Digital Content Project

As you may know, in May 2010 the Identification of E-Books Working Group of BISG’s Identification Committee began a systematic review of the International ISBN Agency recommendations for the identification of e-books and digital content. As a result of this review, BISG hired me to "conduct an objective, research-based study that would describe, define and make recommendations for the best case identification of e-books in the U.S. supply chain."

During September and October, I conducted over 50 interviews with 70 industry personnel from across the spectrum of the publishing industry and subsequently reported my findings to the working group during November. After further internal discussions about the findings, BISG has scheduled a meeting on January 13th to discuss the findings with the wider BISG community. Participants may register here.

This was a challenging engagement given the complexity of the issue, the varying points of view and the compacted time required to complete the project; however, we believe by conducting this study we have established an unequivocal baseline that will allow the industry to address the core issues for content identification as we migrate from physical to digital products.

BISG expects results from the new Identification of E-Books Research Project will directly influence the consensus-driven process of developing best practices for the identification of e-books. This work will happen within ongoing meetings of BISG’s Identification Committee and is expected to result in recommendations to the International ISBN Agency for the further development of this important standard.

BISG and I look forward to your participation during the review of these findings and we hope you will encourage as many of your staff to attend this meeting as necessary.