Subject: draft bici

From: Mark Needleman <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 31 Jan 2000 09:37:26 -0600

The following may be of interest to some subscribers to this list

Mark Needleman
Product Development Specialist - Standards
Data Research Associates, Inc

FROM: NISO Standards Committee AP:
Julia Blixrud (ARL), chair
D. Jeffrey Blumenthal (Follett Corporation)
Tanny Franco (DTIC)
Brian Green (BIC)
Ted Koppel (OCLC)
Clifford Lynch (CNI)
Mark Needleman (Data Research Associates)
Cecilia Preston (Preston and Lynch)
Albert Simmonds (Openly Informatics)
Cliff Morgan (Wiley)
DATE: January 6, 2000
RE: Review of the draft BICI standard
In 1997, following the completion of the revision of the SICI standard, NISO
Standards Committee AP was tasked to develop a standard identification
schema for subunits of books. The intent of this new standard, titled the
BICI: Book Item and Component Identifier, is to provide a way to identify
non-serial items, in the same way that the SICI identifies serial items.
Initially the Standards Committee modeled the BICI on the SICI standard.
However, in the course of its deliberations, the Committee concluded that
books are inherently more complex objects than issues of journals, and a
much richer hierarchy and encoding mechanism was needed. Two design goals
influenced the Committee's work: First, that the BICI standard should be
computable and derivable from elements that are available from the item
in-hand and from the data elements in abstracting and citation databases.
Second, that the BICI should be applicable to books regardless of their
physical manifestation (i.e. the BICI should identify items in both print
and electronic environments).
The following draft, which is being circulated to the NISO Members and the
information community at large for comment, represents the consensus-to-date
of the Committee. This document is a draft subject to change. Some sections
of the document are not complete. Throughout the document Notes identify
questions and commentary for your consideration.
In particular you are asked to consider these issues:
1) As currently defined, the BICI contains mechanisms for describing both
logical components (chapters, sections, etc) and physical components (page
ranges) of items. Are both mechanisms important? If not, which mechanism is
of more importance and more likely to be used? If both structures are
needed, are the mechanisms currently defined appropriate and adequate to
provide those two types of descriptions?
2) Are the mechanisms currently defined for describing hierarchical levels
of works adequate? If not, what additional mechanisms need to be defined?
3) The current draft allows the identification of several different
component types (figures, tables, text, etc). Are these sufficient as
described? Are they too limited? Too complex? Are there important types or
formats of materials, which the draft does not address?
Standards Committee AP welcomes all comments on these and other issues, and
thanks you for helping us produce a standard that best meets the needs of
the user community. You may comment on the standard using the online comment
form attached to the draft document which is located at

http://www.niso.org/bicidrft.html
or
by fax: 301-654-1721; or by mail:
NISO
4733 Bethesda Ave., Suite 300
Bethesda MD 20814