BDS: Data and innovation opening new possibilites

Library Suppliers

BDS aggregates data on books, DVD, music, games, e-books, audio books – in fact virtually a complete library’s stock. It then adds extended content to this information including images, sound and video clips, screenshots, descriptions, contents pages and artist biographies. The result is a pre-publication, library-quality database that has contextual hyperlinking, flexibility and catalogue interoperability that is in-depth, comprehensive and entertaining. More

The bibliographic record provided is designed to meet all library requirements for cataloguing information. BDS has held the contract to supply Cataloguing-in-Publication (CIP) data to the British Library since 1995, and therefore has a complete understanding of the needs of librarians for detailed, accurate pre-publication information. To reflect the dynamic nature of publishing, our subscription service is updated daily, and contains information vital in the context of bookselling, such as format and status of the book.

BDS removes the need for booksellers to source information from all the publishers in the United Kingdom, and the requirement to employ staff with specialist skills to create bibliographic records in UKMARC or MARC 21, the formats used by libraries to load data into their library systems. Records provided via BDS can be sent to libraries to load direct into their acquisitions systems, and used by booksellers internally to inform the control of functions such as ordering, stock control and invoicing. BDS data allows information to be mapped readily to proprietary formats used in-house by booksellers* and can form a profiled selection service for library customers. Alternatively, BDS can supply selected categories of information, such as fiction titles or children's titles or foreign language titles, if you specialise in a particular area.

For major titles, Booksellers will receive confirmed catalogue records on publication as BDS upgrades the advance record with a “book-in-hand” record. The resulting records may be supplied to library customers as a confirmed catalogue record.

Our team of cataloguers can produce catalogue records on demand for titles not represented in our database. This service can be used to supplement our subscription service, or can be used to produce catalogue records for items that cannot be located elsewhere. The cost of record creation varies according to the type of material catalogued. Catalogue records may be returned to the bookseller or sent direct to the library customer.

Delivery

See our libraries’ section for possible delivery methods which can be tailored to suit your systems and practices. For more information contact *If you do not wish to undertake the programming necessary to map from MARC to your own data format, we can undertake this work for you and offer a customised service to feed records into your database.