Does the STW collective mind have an opinion about BSOL?

We’re a small electrical engineering company specializing in Ex certified equipment and quite often reference standards. The BSI copyright rules are pretty impractical if we followed them to the letter. basically:
– If you buy a pdf standard only the purchaser is allowed to use it and it can only be saved locally and must not be copied (including emailing)..so all our standards bought recently actually are ‘owned’ by the purchasing lady.
– Or we can buy the paper copies and keep them in a controlled folder from which people can sign them out and in.

So I’ve had a demo of BSOL. Basically an online library with user accounts accessing your standards (up to 25). I’m sold simply on the management of the system side of it (updates happen automatically, no copyright infringement that an auditor might grump about, users can request and search for standards themselves without signing things in and out etc.) but I’ve got to propose this to the MD and get him to agree to £2000 a year.

I can do the weigh up of current costs against the 2 grand a year but was looking for stuff I possibly haven’t considered or any success / failure stories.

Thanks Hive.

We use standards BS/IEC/EN. In practice they rarely change other than specific amendments.

We get them from Estonia https://www.evs.ee/shop hard copy or single/multiple user licences

We use IHS for Network Rail standards, they also supply BS/ISO/IEC and a lot of others.

Not sure on the cost of BS etc. but may be worth looking at as an alternative?

Why do you get them from Estonia, are they cheaper??

very

The BSI copyright rules are pretty impractical if we followed them to the letter.

Don’t, I doubt anyone else does.

Another user of IHS here, you get access to loads of other standards, guidance, best practice etc as well so would be worth looking into.