Candidate Statement - Graham Bell

I wish to be considered as a candidate for membership of the board of the IDPF.

As executive director of EDItEUR, I represent a standards organisation that plays an important role in the development of the global book, e-book and serials supply chains. EDItEUR develops and maintains a number of key metadata standards, including the ONIX family of descriptive metadata messages, and the EDItX family of transactional messages which includes a sales reporting message that is intended for reporting sales of e-books from retail platforms back to their publishers and other rightsholders. These metadata standards are implemented widely in North America, throughout Europe and increasingly in the Asia-Pacific region.

EDItEUR is a non-profit member-supported organisation, with a growing membership drawn from all parts of the book and journals business โ€“ members include many publishers, intermediaries of various types, retailers, libraries, as well as trade organisations and other standards organisations. These members represent around 25 different countries. EDItEUR has become an acknowledged centre of expertise in metadata and identifiers. It is this expertise and range of connections that can be useful to the IDPF as it seeks to build content standards suitable for many diverse sectors of publishing. EDItEUR manages the International ISBN Agency, and provides secretariat services to the ISNI and ISTC international agencies. EDItEUR is also a founder-member of the Linked Content Coalition, an association of standards agencies focused on improving interoperability between metadata and identification standards across disparate media โ€“ including the book, journal, music, news, image and movie sectors โ€“ that has developed a reference model for rights data that is being piloted within the UK Copyright Hub.

I, and EDItEUR, have taken an active role in IDPF working groups and IDPF events over several years and my predecessor as EDItEUR exec director has served as an IDPF board member. Prior to my appointment as executive director of EDItEUR, I served as its chief data architect for four years, working primarily on the development of EDItEUR's standards. Previously I worked for HarperCollins UK for 15 years, most recently as head of publishing systems and responsible for development and support of its editorial, bibliographic and digital asset management systems. I was directly involved in the launches of many HarperCollins digital initiatives, including e-audio, e-book and print on demand programmes. Prior to HarperCollins, I spent time as an editor and in technical roles with Redwood Publishing and BBC Magazines.

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