Business Information Topic Committee
Co-chairs: Anne Campbell (EBSCO Information Systems), Christine Stamison (Northeast Research Libraries Consortium)
Altmetrics Working Groups
NISO Altmetrics Initiative web page
Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics Project (NISO RP-25-2016)
NISO published the output of its Altmetrics Initiative as a Recommended Practice, NISO RP-25-2016, Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Metrics Project in September 2016, following its approval by the Business Information Topic Committee. The Recommended Practice covers a range of outputs; as the initiative consisted of three NISO working groups, each contributed specific material in particular areas:
- A definition of altmetrics and assembled use cases representing potential activity and motivations for several personas: librarians; research administrators; members of hiring committees; academics/researchers; publishing editors; and media officers and producers of altmetrics data. Themes of showcasing key achievements in scholarly outputs, aid in research assessment, and support of discovery are illustrated via these use cases.
- A report and set of recommendations in the area of data metrics, including a landscape analysis and discussion of key metrics and workflows.
- A compilation of various outputs and indicators that could serve as alternative metrics, to establish the breadth and depth of the non-publication metric space, as well as serve as a way to push the conversation on metrics closer to a discussion about impact.
- A comprehensive catalog of persistent identifier players and schema, including a discussion of domain relevance and initiatives.
- A Code of Conduct to support data quality, aimed at those providers whose data is used for the calculation and circulation of alternative assessment metrics. This Code is intended to "provide clear guidelines for the collection, processing, dissemination and reuse of altmetric data [...] intended to introduce transparency and ensure that delivered data is trustworthy, replicable, consistently reported within and across sources, and accurately represents what it intends and/or purports to measure." Generic guidelines are further illustrated by examples from many providers and aggregators.
Working Group chairs were Michael Habib, formerly of Elsevier and now independent, and Robin Chin Roemer of the University of Washington; Kristi Holmes of Northwestern University and Mike Taylor of Elsevier and now Digital Science; and Stefanie Haustein of the University of Montreal and Greg Tananbaum of SPARC. Martin Fenner of DataCite served as project consultant. A Steering Committee which was made up of the co-chairs of the working groups; Martin; Todd Carpenter and Nettie Lagace of NISO; and Stuart Maxwell, representing the Business Information Topic Committee communicated regularly to enhance coordination and communication among the groups.
The NISO Altmetrics Initiative was begun in 2013 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This development of recommended practices follows on the publication of an industry white paper distilling community discussions on what areas of alternative metrics would benefit most from standards-related development.
NISO is now assembling a Standing Committee to provide support and outreach for all areas of the Outputs Recommended Practice, continue to observe the altmetrics landscape, and potentially recommend future areas of standardization. If you are interested in participating on this committee, please contact Nettie Lagace.
Demand Driven Acquisitions Working Group
Co-chairs: Barbara Kawecki (YBP Library Services); Michael Levine-Clark (University of Denver)
Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs Recommended Practice (NISO RP-20-2014)
The Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs Recommended Practice, published by NISO in late June 2014, includes recommendations covering overall goals and objectives for a library's DDA program. Descriptions of processes include best practices for profiling, management of MARC records (methods for automated updating and removal of discovery records), mechanisms for local program assessment, and some additional considerations for consortia and public libraries. In addition to the Recommended Practice, the DDA Working Group published a summary of surveys it conducted as part of its research on areas of technical processes, access methods, and metric modeling. This survey data is extremely comprehensive and contains a wealth of qualitative information representing library perspectives and experiences in this area, useful to anyone studying this area of growth.
There have been informal discussions by stakeholders about a possible update to the Recommended Practice, now that several years have passed since it was published and DDA has become an essential part of the library collections and use landscape. Such a project may begin in 2017, subject to discussion and approval of the Business Information Topic Committee.
PIE-J (Presentation & Identification of E-Journals) Standing Committee
Chair: Sarah (Sally) Glasser (Hofstra University)
PIE-J Recommended Practice (NISO RP-16-2013)
The PIE-J Recommended Practice, PIE-J: Presentation & Identification of E-Journals (NISO RP-16-2013) was published in 2013. It provides guidance to publishers and platform providers on the presentation of e-journals--a critical component of the global scholarly infrastructure--particularly in the areas of title presentation, accurate use of ISSN, and citation practices. The PIE-J Recommended Practice is intended to alleviate the problems encountered by end users who attempt to access article-based materials online using citation elements. Two forms of a brochure describing PIE-J are also available via the PIE-J Workroom page.
The PIE-J Standing Committee is charged with responding to specific questions about the Recommended Practice, gathering comments for a full review of the Recommended Practice document, and promoting PIE-J. As part of this work, the Standing Committee has made available a template on the PIE-J website for librarians who would like to contact publishers and providers to describe concerns about the presentation of e-journals on their websites. The template includes suggested wording but is completely customizable. The Standing Committee continues to meet to discuss implementation, feedback regarding specific publishers, and marketing efforts, and is liaising with efforts to update ISO 8:1977 Documentation -- Presentation of periodicals. It is also compiling a list of suggested edits to the Recommended Practice to be considered for future inclusion, and is discussing possible tools for providers to communicate their support of PIE-J.
The 24-month report from the PIE-J Standing Committee to the Business Information Topic Committee for approval and renewal of its charge is also available. (The document and renewal were approved!) The report includes a summary of the work done to promote PIE-J, including conducting a survey of the community, which is helping to drive further communication strategies.
Sally Glasser, chair of the Standing Committee, spoke about the group's efforts on the NISO Open Teleconference in May. A recording is available.
SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Adam Chesler (American Institute of Physics), Anne McKee (Greater Western Library Alliance)
SERU Recommended Practice (NISO RP-7-2012)
The SERU Recommended Practice was updated in 2012 to be more flexible for use with online products beyond e-journals, and is supported by its Standing Committee who works to publicize SERU and educate libraries and publishers via direct contacts and public presentations at industry conferences. The SERU public workroom pages are available to help publishers and libraries understand and use the SERU material. The SERU Registry, whose purpose is to enable publishers and librarians to more easily identify each other, continues to be updated with new supporters of SERU; since April, 1 new publisher and 6 new libraries have been added bringing the total SERU Registrants to 159 publishers/vendors and 340 libraries and consortia.
SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: James Van Mil (University of Cincinnati), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
SUSHI standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014)
COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-2012)
This Standing Committee provides maintenance and support for ANSI/NISO Z39.93, The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol, and acts as the maintenance group for the COUNTER schema by providing recommendations to COUNTER and making changes to the COUNTER XML schemas (as approved by COUNTER). The group works under a continuous maintenance procedure, which enables it to more smoothly shuttle through further updates to the standard. When COUNTER 4 was released it neccesitated relevant changes to the SUSHI schema and applicable updates to the SUSHI workroom pages. More recently, the SUSHI Standing Committee has been discussing the impact of the COUNTER 5 Code of Practice -- to be released this summer and expected to be implemented in early 2019-- on its material; for example, the possible use of multiple schemas to support various aspects of COUNTER and/or the adoption of SUSHI-Lite as a mechanism for transfer of data.
The SUSHI schemas, COUNTER schemas, and sample reports are continually updated on the SUSHI web pages. Note that the SUSHI Server Registry which has been hosted on the NISO SUSHI site has recently been incorporated into the overall COUNTER Registry of Compliance. The Standing Committee is also working to ensure that SUSHI support materials are congruent with USUS, the community web site.
Oliver Pesch spoke about SUSHI and SUSHI-Lite during the NISO Update at the ALA Annual conference in Chicago, IL in June.
SUSHI-Lite Working Group
Co-chairs: James Van Mil (University of Cincinnati), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
The SUSHI-Lite Working Group is continuing to modify its draft NISO Technical Report to address issues of more fine-grained reports and effects of various frameworks. This working group is exploring the potential adaptation of the SUSHI Standard to accommodate present day development tools and usage needs related to retrieving 'snippets' of usage through web services. As of early this year, a draft API specification is available for comment.
Three objectives of the technical report (described in the original SUSHI Lite Work Item) are to:
- Allow smaller units of usage ("snippets") to be retrieved with SUSHI to enable SUSHI to become the standard for implementing real-time retrieval of usage for single journals or articles, as is becoming the practice within e-resource workflows and systems offering alternative metric displays.
- Allow for an optional implementation of SUSHI with the web services that would be accessing SUSHI snippets--specifically, a RESTful HTTP interface with COUNTER usage data returned in JSON format.
- Introduce a generalized filter specification that can be used with the new RESTful/JSON approach. These filters would allow the client to refine the request to a single book, journal, or article, or to specify extended data like account or customer details that are currently not available in the current standard.
The Technical Report is expected to be finalized and published before the end of 2017. Further demonstration sites and code examples provided by Working Group members are intended to be available via the SUSHI-Lite web pages to enable users to create more localized programs to experiment with the report's ideas.
Transfer Standing Committee
Co-chairs: James Phillpotts (Oxford University Press), Jennifer Bazeley (Miami University Libraries
Transfer Workroom
Transfer Recommended Practice (NISO RP-24-2015)
The aim of the Transfer initiative, begun by the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) in 2006, is to support smooth and uninterrupted access to content by librarians and readers when a journal changes ownership and online content is transferred from a transferring publisher to a receiving publisher. UKSG announced the availability of the updated Transfer Code of Practice, Version 3.0, in March 2014. During late 2014 and early 2015, Transfer successfully moved from UKSG to NISO and the UKSG document was republished as a NISO Recommended Practice in January 2015. Further support, education, and potential future revisions to Transfer are now managed by the NISO Standing Committee which discusses promotion and communication strategies for all audience on regular conference calls. Subgroups focusing on society and commercial publishers and librarians discuss specific issues which can then be raised for discussion and decision by the full Standing Committee.
The Transfer Code of Practice provides consistent guidelines to help publishers ensure that journal content remains easily accessible by librarians and readers when there is a transfer between parties, and to ensure that the transfer process occurs with minimum disruption. The Code contains best practice guidelines for both the Transferring Publisher and the Receiving Publisher. Publishers are asked to endorse the Code, and to abide by its principles wherever it is commercially reasonable to do so.
Transfer-compliant publishers are listed on the Publisher Endorsement web page. An alerting service is also available at the Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service; this tool gives advance notification to libraries and third parties, such as subscription agents, regarding journals that are moving. Publishers are not required to sign up to the Code, and there is no sanction if a publisher does not; but it is hoped that as the Code of Practice delineates an industry-standard best practice, statements of Transfer compliance provide a common understanding between publishers on the tasks associated with journal transfer and thus support an efficient handover, clearly beneficial to any business transaction.
Z39.7 Data Dictionary Standing Committee
Chair: Martha Kyrillidou, QualityMetrics
The Information Services and Use: Metrics & statistics for libraries and information providers - Data Dictionary (ANSI/NISO Z39.7) is a continuously maintained standard; the fifth edition was released in summer 2013. The purpose of the Data Dictionary is to assist the information community by indicating and defining useful quantifiable information to measure the resources and performance of libraries and to provide a body of valid and comparable data on American libraries. It identifies standard definitions, methods, and practices relevant to library statistics activities in the United States. Any user of the online standard may submit suggested changes. The Standing Committee then reviews these suggestions during its scheduled monthly phone calls.
As part of its work, the Standing Committee scans and reviews the statistical survey landscape and examines other assessment efforts-including use of particular vocabularies-in the community for effects on the Data Dictionary. The Z39.7 Standing Committee is currently considering likely updates to the standard as part of its adherence to ANSI-approved Continuous Maintenance procedures (Section 4). Its survey of the assessment landscape has so far included discussion of how libraries may need to account for shared collections and for resources in institutional repositories; the PLA initiative Project Outcome (not a formalized data collection platforms as yet, but one that may offer useful information about methodologies, protocols, etc. to the library and information community); management of usage statistics generated by institutional repositories; OMB's recent call for comments on the proposed revisions to IPEDS 2016 academic libraries component; and other national surveys with data elements, such as statistics on public school libraries/media centers. The Standing Committee is also liaising with the COSLA Measures that Matter initiative.
For notifications about approved future revisions to the standard, subscribe to the Z39.7 notification mailing list.
Content and Collections Management Topic Committee
Co-chairs: Marti Heyman (OCLC); Jody DeRidder (University of Alabama Libraries)
E-Book Bibliographic Metadata Requirements in the Sale, Publication, Discovery, and Preservation Supply Chain (E-Book Metadata Working Group)
Co-chairs: Ravit David (University of Toronto), Alistair Morrison (Johns Hopkins University)
E-Book Metadata Workroom
Work Item Proposal Approved by NISO Voting Members
This NISO initiative is working to collect the minimal metadata requirements necessary to describe e-books in order to support sales, discovery, delivery, deaccessioning, and preservation, and identify the most effective and efficient way for metadata to be moved through the entire supply chain. The eventual NISO Recommended Practice will help the creators and managers of bibliographic records cooperate to minimize duplication of work and ensure overall quality of metadata.
The Working Group, as part of its first phase, formed subgroups to study the metadata areas of authorities, dates, and identifiers in more detail to suss out further requirements and potential areas of interaction between stakeholders. A second phase is now charting workflow processes for various stakeholders to identify and prioritize the different metadata elements and map proposed requirements at the element level across workflows. Following this analysis, the working group expects to make its draft recommended practice available for public comment by the beginning of 2018.
Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Jeff Beck (National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine), B. Tommie Usdin (Mulberry Technologies, Inc.)
JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015)
The purpose of JATS is to define a suite of XML elements and attributes that describes the content of metadata and journal articles using a common format that enables the exchange of journal content. This Tag Suite thus is intended to preserve intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which the content was originally delivered, and enables an archive to capture structural and semantic components of existing material. In addition, the JATS standard includes three implementations of the suite, called Tag Sets, which are intended to provide models for archiving, publishing, and authoring journal article content.
The updated version of JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite 1.1, ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015 was published in early January 2016. This edition, including approved comments from users made on JATS 1.0 through February 2015, is a revision of ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012, also known as JATS 1.0, first published in July 2012. The updated standard is backwards-compatible with JATS 1.0; this means that any document that was valid according to JATS 1.0 will be valid according to JATS 1.1.
The Standing Committee has been working for the past several months discussing and making decisions on the current set of comments to be included in the next update of JATS (version 1.2), per its Continuous Maintenance procedure.
NISO STS Working Groups
Co-chairs: Bruce Rosenblum (Inera), Robert Wheeler (American Society of Mechanical Engineers)
Draft, NISO Z39.102, STS: Standards Tag Suite
The purpose of NISO Z39.102, STS: Standards Tag Suite and now nearing formal approval and publication, is to define a suite of XML elements and attributes that describes the full-text content and metadata of standards--including co-produced standards and standards bodies' adoptions of existing standards--with the intent of providing a common format in which standards organizations, publishers, disseminators, archives, and any lawful user can publish and exchange standards content. The intent of the Tag Suite is to preserve the intellectual content of standards independent of the form in which that content was originally delivered. The Tag Suite enables the capture of structural and semantic components of material without modeling any particular sequence or textual format.
STS is an update and modification of a specific tag set used for standards publishing, the ISO STS. As part of its formalization, it will be officially linked to JATS (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015 JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite), a widely used specification which defines a set of XML elements and attributes for tagging journal articles and describes several article models. Supporting non-normative materials, including a tag library and DTD, XSD, and RNG schemas for each of the tag sets, are available at http://www.niso-sts.org/. Next steps for the standard, now that public comments have been addressed and the final draft has been aprpoved by the Working Group and the NISO Content and Collections Management Topic Committee, will be approval by NISO Voting Members and ANSI, and publication by autumn 2017.
The NISO STS Working Group consists of two groups consisting of various SDOs, publishing technology suppliers, and other stakeholders. Both the Steering Group and the Technical Working Group are co-chaired by Bruce Rosenblum of Inera and Robert Wheeler of ASME, with Mulberry Technologies serving as Secretariat.
Minutes from the Steering Group and Technical Working Group calls are available on the STS web site. An email discussion list provides community support for STS topics.
Co-chairs Bruce Rosenblum and Robert Wheeler joined NISO Executive Director Todd Carpenter for a discussion about STS on the April NISO Open Teleconference, for which a recording is available.
NISO Vocabularies
NISO Vocabularies New Work Item Proposal
A NISO technical report, Issues in Vocabulary Management, is now nearing publication. This project grew out of the NISO Bibliographic Roadmap Initiative, work which intended to identify areas where agreement on standard or recommended practices would support better bibliographic data exchange. The working group who's authored the technical report met initially as a single bloc for several months to establish common understandings and a proposed roadmap forward, then split into several subgroups to address different areas of work:
- Vocabulary Use & Reuse Subgroup, co-chaired by Diane Hillmann of Metadata Management Associates and Daniel Lovins of New York University. This subgroup worked to determine best practices in policies where vocabularies may be repurposed by organizations who are not the owner or maintainer of the vocabulary.
- Vocabulary Documentation Subgroup, co-chaired by Sean Glover of YBP Library Services and Natalie Bulick of Indiana State University. This subgroup examined which information about a vocabulary should be documented in order to meet community needs, using as input recommendations published by the Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) project.
- Vocabulary Preservation Subgroup, chaired by Sherle Abramson-Bluhm of the University of Michigan. This subgroup created recommendations regarding 'orphaned' or abandoned vocabularies and how these might be managed in the short and long term.
It became apparent that the group's work could aid community members working in the current "transitional" environment, where experience with policies, social constructs, and practical aspects of moving forward in a common infrastructure might be scattered or missing. The group decided to put its efforts into providing some solutions for these gaps; the forthcoming technical report is the output of this process.
A Steering Committee has overseen the three working groups and ensured coordination of effort across the three areas of focus. This Steering Committee met monthly and included the subgroup co-chairs and a liaison to the Content and Collections Management Topic Committee, Marti Heyman of OCLC.
The draft Technical Report, describing the vocabulary landscape and working environments for each of these areas listed above, and including recommendations for further work for the community, was released for public comment during June/July. The working group is now evaluating the comments for inclusion in a final document expected to be published by NISO in September.
Diane Hillmann provided a project update at the NISO update at ALA Annual in Chicago, IL, in June.
Protocol for Exchanging Serial Content (PESC) Working Group
Co-chairs: Leslie Johnston (National Archives and Records Administration), Kimberly Tryka (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
PESC Recommended Practice (NISO RP-23-2015)
The PESC Recommended Practice was published in June 2015. This NISO publication describes a packaging specification to be used for exchange and archiving of serial publications. Many different organizations, such as libraries, archives, indexing services, content aggregators, publishers, and content creators exchange and work with the diverse digital files that comprise serial content. There are many reasons for copies of serial content to be transferred from organization to organization, and even within a single organization, many times during the lifecycle of the content. When exchanging content, the files that comprise a serial "publication" are packaged together in some manner and these packages can be highly variable.
The PESC Recommended Practice offers guidance to members of the scholarly communication community on preferred practices for the packaging and exchange of serial content that will enable the automation of processes to receive and manage serial content at scale. By following these practices, organizations can make it clear what content has been transmitted, how it is organized, and what processing is required when a new package is received.
Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee
Co-chairs: Pascal Calarco (University of Windsor); Peter Murray (IndexData)
Access and License Indicators Working Group
Co-chairs: Ed Pentz (Crossref), Cameron Neylon (Curtin University; formerly of PLOS), Greg Tananbaum (SPARC)
Access and License Indicators Workroom
Access and License Indicators Recommended Practice (NISO RP-22-2015)
The Access and License Indicators Working Group, initially known as the Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group, published its Recommended Practice in early 2015. This document defines a structure for standardized bibliographic metadata to describe the accessibility of journal articles as well as describes how "open" the item is via tagging to link to the item's license terms. The Recommended Practice meant to provide a solution to the problem where many offerings are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other descriptions, and the terms offered vary between publishers and, in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author. A number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are "open" while the rest of the journal's content is available only by subscription or license, and no standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is freely readable and what re-use rights might be available to readers.
Along with the published Recommended Practice, the ALI schema is available along with code samples illustrating several of the use cases documented in a Recommended Practice appendix. Also, support for ALI is included in the latest publication of ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite 1.1.
The Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee has discussed potential next steps to ensure that there is appropriate education, promotion, and adjudication of potential updates to the Recommended Practice. If you are interested in participating in this NISO Standing Committee, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org). To follow the work of this group, subscribe to the OA Indicators mailing list.
Flexible API STandard for E-content NISO (FASTEN)
Co-chairs: Josh Weisman (Ex Libris), Christopher Carvey (Queens Library)
This new Working Group has been meeting for the past few months to create a NISO Recommended Practice which will modernize library-vendor technical interoperability using RESTful Web service APIs and standard mobile application intent calls, to solve the problem of multiple vendor methods for integration with discovery platforms, OPACs, patron accounts, etc. Each individual implementation provides a different patron experience which makes it difficult for new users to adopt e-content, and for libraries to support all the variances. The Working Group is using the Queens Library API Requirements as an initial draft.
The intended outputs of this Working Group will include a foundation API set that the library industry can build on to fulfill an array of user and library needs, including quicker response times, flexible item discovery and delivery options, improved resource availability, and more seamless integration of electronic and physical resources. Currently the group is analyzing user and developer "pain points" and analyzing existing library-vendor communication toolsets for potential overlap. Future work will likely include a survey of or interviews with community members and testing of draft documents in real-life scenarios as well as development of materials for education.
Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Magaly Bascones (JISC), Kathy Marcaccio (Gale Cengage)
Contact KBART Chairs for endorsement approval
Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2014)
The KBART Recommended Practice, published in 2014 by NISO, builds on the recommendations of the first version of the recommended practice to address areas of metadata for e-books and conference proceedings, packages licensed via consortia deals, and describe how open access metadata might be published and shared in knowledge bases while continuing to supply a format for general transfer of journal data to the knowledge base of a link resolver supplier. The KBART Standing Committee provides support and education activities for KBART and works to streamline publisher approval for inclusion in the KBART Registry, which includes details of contacts, URLs, and instructions relating to the transfer of e-resource metadata between content providers and link resolvers. All KBART registrants are requested to update their endorsement details pursuant to the new recommendations.
The Standing Committee is reviewing its educational materials including material on its website, updating these, and seeking new opportunities to present to potential KBART audiences. Input for strategies will come from the results of a recent survey conducted among content providers, which is currently being analyzed. The Standing Committee is also planning its relationship to the new KBART Automation Working Group.
To follow the group's activities, subscribe to the KBART interest mailing list.
Enhancing KBART for Automated Exchange of Title Lists and Library Holdings
Work Item Proposal Approved by NISO Voting Members
KBART Automation Workroom
This Working Group is extending the KBART Phase 2 Recommended Practice to provide technical instructions to support individual library holdings of electronic products and automate the request and retrieval of KBART reports for title lists and library holdings. There is overlap in membership between this group and the KBART Standing Committee which will ensure close communication about group discussions.
Work is expected to include to include the utilization of API calls--implementing a token-based call method--to share data between content providers and knowledge bases. Subgroups are now documenting and analyzing the exchange landscape and stakeholder use cases.
Christine Stohn provided an update on the Working Group as part of the NISO program at ALA Annual in Chicago in June.
NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol) Standing Committee
Chair: Mike Dicus (Ex Libris)
ANSI/NISO Z39.83-1-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange - Part 1: Protocol (NCIP)
The NCIP Standing Committee operates via Continuous Maintenance procedures to manage the latest NCIP standard, version 2.02, which was published in 2012. Each month the committee holds conference calls to reviews status of implementations and discuss other general business, such as additions to the NCIP website and implementor questions. In the past, there has been an in-person meeting once a year in order to review any ongoing updates to the NCIP protocol per the Standing Committee's continuous maintenance procedure and to discuss other related issues of interest to the members of the Standing Committee. Input from the public is welcome.
The Standing Committee has recommended that the standard published in 2012 should be reaffirmed by NISO Voting Members, per ANSI requirements for standards under continuous maintenance, and then moved to periodic maintenance as many other ANSI/NISO standards are managed. This recommendation, recently approved by the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee, will soon be put to NISO Voting members for ratification.
Open Discovery Initiative Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Rachel Kessler (Ex Libris), Laura Morse (Harvard University)
ODI Recommended Practice (NISO RP-19-2014)
The Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Recommended Practice, published in June 2014, is directed toward the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search. The published document includes background on the discovery landscape, recommendations in the areas of technical formats for data format and data transfer; communication of libraries' rights regarding specific content; descriptors regarding particular levels of indexing for content; definition of fair linking to published content; and determination of appropriate usage statistics to be collected to address stakeholder needs. The ODI Standing Committee supports and publicizes ODI, and monitors the discovery landscape to determine whether and when further recommendations should be studied and written; currently it is collecting potential items for future proposals for these.
The ODI Standing Committee is working to further publicize and communicate vendor conformance statements and other general ODI issues and metrics and has published a brochure describing these. Further initiatives include outreach to content providers, especially A&I vendors; creating additional tools for librarians; and ongoing communications with discovery service providers. The Standing Committee has added new "librarian talking points" to its website, to help increase vendor conformance, and has been discussing value propositions to help communicate the ODI message as clearly as possible.
The ODI Standing Committee posts periodic updates on its work to the ODI observer mailing list; any interested observer may join this list. A Twitter account, @NISO_ODI can also be followed.
Laura Morse, co-chair of the Standing Committee, provided an update on the group's work as part of the NISO update at ALA Annual in Chicago, IL in June and also presented at the Ex Libris Users of North America (ELUNA) meeting in Schaumburg, IL, in May.
ResourceSync Working Group
Co-chairs: Todd Carpenter (NISO), Herbert Van de Sompel (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2017, ResourceSync Framework Specification
ResourceSync, a specification which describes a synchronization framework for the web consisting of various capabilities that allow third party systems to remain synchronized with a server's evolving resources, was formally approved by ANSI and published in May 2014 as ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2014. The core ResourceSync group was funded by the Sloan Foundation and was augmented by other industry and research participants, some of whom were sponsored by Jisc.
The problem that ResourceSync was designed to solve spans the areas of search, discovery, deposit, metadata harvesting, and transfer; there is a need to keep collections of resources in sync so that additions, updates, and deletions of one are reflected in the other. The ResourceSync standard was written in such a way that individual capabilities could be combined to meet local requirements. A server may also describe synchronization capabilities that it supports and means through which third party systems may discover this support. The core functionality of the specification is intended to represent a functional replacement of OAI-PMH. (Other features, such as change notification, framework notification, and archive capabilities are published through separate documents, not currently part of the material part of NISO/ANSI standardization.)
The ResourceSync standard was recently updated, approved by NISO Voting members, and published as ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2017. This update addressed an issue regarding communication of dates for change notification versus those stored for latest modification.
A quick overview of ResourceSync, via YouTube, is available at http://youtu.be/ASQ4jMYytsA and also via the group's NISO webpage. Martin Klein, member of the Working Group, presented "An overview of capabilities and real-world use cases for discovery, harvesting, and synchronization of resources on the web" with several others at DPLAFest 2017 in Chicago in April.
Tracking Link Origins in Networked Information Environments
Co-chairs: Ken Varnum (University of Michigan), Gary Pollack (EBSCO Information Services)
Tracking Link Origins Workroom
This project is developing a NISO Recommended Practice to help libraries, publishers, and other content providers to accurately track the sites/platforms from which incoming links originate when they pass through a link resolver. Where content hosts utilize HTTP analysis to determine where users started research, links coming from link resolvers will represent the domain of the link resolver and not that of the platform where the user originated his/her search. Recommendations for actions or configuration instructions can better credit the originating platform, helping publishers and librarians to appreciate this part of the search picture.
The Working Group is investigating options for passing the link origin information to publishers and implementation of one or more proof-of-concept projects to demonstrate proposed techniques. As it is now nearing the end of its research phase, members are analyzing notes, diagrams, and tests of various workflows as well as a wider survey of libraries, for text to be included in a draft document. Proof-of-concept projects are continuing in their setup.
New Work Items
Revisions of ANSI/NISO Z39.18, Z39.19, Z39.29, regarding Scientific and Technical Reports; Controlled Vocabularies; and Bibliographic References
ANSI/NISO Z39.29-2005 (R2010) Bibliographic References
NISO Voting Members recently voted to approve revision projects for three standards last revised in 2005 (and reaffirmed in 2010). NISO is thus soliciting working members and co-chairs to participate in one or more of these three projects. Of course, all of the standards cover different areas and the revisions will have different scopes, but in general terms the requirement for revision for all of them is necessitated by advancements in the use of digital documents and other materials.
If you are interested in potential participation in any of these groups, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org).
Revision of ANSI/NISO Z39.48 - Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives
Work is now under way to organize a working group to revise ANSI/NISO Z39.48 - Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives, an existing standard last revised in 1992, last reaffirmed in 2009. This action comes from the periodic review process outlined in the NISO Procedures document (Section 7.5). This standard establishes criteria for coated and uncoated paper that will last several hundred years without significant deterioration under normal use and storage conditions in libraries and archives. It identifies the specific properties of such paper and specifies the tests required to demonstrate these properties. If you are interested in potential participation in this group, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org). We are specifically seeking individuals with experience in paper preservation needs; paper composition, fiber, and stability; and/or paper analysis and test methods.
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