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A new service from BSI has been announced. British Standards Online is BSI's database of standards and is claimed to be the most comprehensive and authoritative source of British, and adopted European and International standards. BSI say that British Standards Online "is rich in business-critical content covering a broad range of disciplines for all industrial sectors. Delivering information directly to the desktop, this growing resource contains bibliographic details of more than 45000 publications and permits downloading the full-text of any standard". For more information visit www.bsonline.bsi-global.com or e-mail to BSOLinfo@bsi-global.com. In a parallel development, the BSI has discontinued the supply of review copies of standards to those organisations (such as OCCA) which participated in their preparation. Opportunities for independent review and comment upon standards have therefore been severely curtailed. In view of the secrecy which surrounds participation in the development of standards, and the price and page inflation which has accompanied the recent growth of the standards-publishing industry, these are unwelcome developments indeed. Many main public libraries still hold reference copies of British Standards, where the published texts may be consulted by bona fide researchers in advance of a purchase decision. |
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Where prices are quoted, they are the prices from BSI (www.bsi-global.com) at their non-member rate. Special prices apply to members of the Association ordering through Eden Court (gensec@occa.or.uk).
Peter Munn - January 2007 |