Guide to British Standards

Standards help to regulate products and ensure quality, health and safety, and efficiency. They also allow for people to share expectations of a product or service.

A standard is the agreed pattern, model, or guidance for doing something. They vary in two key ways:

1. The type of agreement.

2. The number of parties that are involved in the decision-making process for these agreements.

• Quality management

• Environmental management

• Health and safety

• Information technology security

• Construction

• Energy management

• Food safety

• Accessibility for people with disabilities

The British Standards Institute (BSI) is a national standards body for the UK run by a private company. They facilitate the drawing up of standards, promote their usage and represent the UK's socio-economic interests on an international scale.

The BSI creates standards by collaborating with industry experts, government bodies, trade associations and businesses to develop good practice, offer consumers protection and facilitate proceedings of international trade.

Under legal deposit legislation, we receive copies of all British Standards in both print and electronic format. 

We also subscribe to the British Standards Online database.

If you are a Library member, you can order print versions of standards through our main catalogue and view them in person at our George IV Bridge building.

Some standards will have their own individual records in the main catalogue but many older, historic standards, will not. To order standards that are not individually catalogued you will first need to know which standard you are looking for and have the standard number.

There are a few resources that can help you find a standard and its number.

• British Standards Online database – as a member, you can access this onsite. If you are a Library member with a Scottish residential address you can also access this remotely. See our section on this database for more info.

• The British Standards Handbook – this might be helpful if you know the year of the standard you are looking for, but we don't have complete holdings for this resource.

• Search the British Standards Institution website – this will allow you to search for relevant standards using keywords. You can also browse by industry. Information about withdrawn or superseded versions is available in the 'history' tab on a standard's page.

How to order historic standards

1. If you have searched the main catalogue for the standard you are looking and it does not have its own catalogue record, go to the catalogue record for British Standards.

2. If you are not already logged in to your library account, click 'Log in' under the 'Request' Heading.

3. Under the 'Request' heading, select 'Request this title'. This will take you to an Alternative Request form where you can specify which standard you wish to order.

4. On the form, there are three holdings for British Standards, each with different shelf marks: P.la.595, SR.Prog.249/65 and SSL. Each holding specifies the series of British Standard held at that shelf mark and a list of relevant prefixes, eg: ‘BS EN’ for a British/European Standard. Select the relevant holding for the standard you wish to order.

5. In the field labelled 'Please specify the date and volume number you require', provide the following information:

   • The full prefix,

   • The number of the standard,

   • The year of the standard you would like to order.

6. When this information is complete, select the button labelled 'Submit this request'.

7. Once the form is submitted, you will receive an email confirming your request.

Non-print legal deposit (NPLD) Standards are electronic versions that can only be viewed in person at a Library building on one of our public computers. Only one person at a time can view an individual copy of a Standard in this format.

Individual holdings for these are available in the Library's main catalogue. An NPLD standard in the catalogue will have a link labelled 'Non-print legal deposit item – available on National Library of Scotland premises.' You can click this link to access the standard.

If you would like to find out more about a standard, select the title in the results listing. The record will also show any related standards that the Library holds as NPLD items under the 'Subjects' heading.

You can use the British Standards Online eResource if you visit in person, or you can access it remotely online if you are a Library member with a Scottish residential address.

The British Standards Online database holds all the publications of the BSI. The repository contains bibliographic information on over 39,500 documents including:

• Current, withdrawn, and draft British Standards

• 16,000 BSI adopted European and International standards

• Technical handbooks

• Codes of practice

• Guidelines

• Product specifications

• Dimensions

• Performance and standard glossaries

Searching for British Standards

You can search the BSOL database for specific standards by typing the standard's name into the search box in the top right of the screen.

The search result listings will indicate if the standard is available through the Library's subscription. It will also tell you whether the standard is current, withdrawn or superseded.

Select filters like 'status,' 'date range', and 'publisher' to narrow the standard search results.

You can select the standard's title in the search result for more information about it. 

Browsing British Standards

From the top menu, select 'Browse for Standards'. You can browse the database by 'Module' or 'Subject':

• Browsing by subject: International Classification for Standards (ICS) codes are used to classify international, regional and national standards. You can use these codes to find standards by subject. 

• Browsing by module: The standards on BSOL have been grouped into subject areas, which have been broken down by publishing body to create modules. 

Select the standard you are interested in to view it in more detail.

British Standards details

If a standard is available through the Library's subscription, you will be able to 'Preview' or 'Quick view' the standard when you have selected it from the search results. You will not be able to download PDF copies of standards through the Library's subscription.

When you are viewing a page for a standard, it will include the following categories of information:

• 'ICS classification' will list related standards, which you can select to view. 

• The 'Cross references' drop down list provides links to withdrawn Standards related to the search result.

• 'Document related information' provides:

  • Bibliographic information, such as the publication date, publisher, and ISBN,

  • Details of standards which superseded the document,

  • Committee details,

  • Titles of the document in other languages.

If you have any questions about standards or how to access them, get in touch via our online enquiry form.