NISO Launches New Project to Improve Communication Around Content Platform Migrations
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Voting Members have approved a new project, Recommended Practices Around Content Platform Migrations, to provide a standard process and recommendations to all parties dealing with online content platforms, which would improve communication between stakeholders before, during, and after migration. NISO is now forming a working group; community members with experience in aspects of content migration are invited to engage in the creation of this Recommended Practice to better guide publishers, vendors, and libraries.
“With so many publishers making their data available online, the platform ’market’ is very active. Librarians have reported over 30 content platform migrations from 2016 to the present,” says Athena Hoeppner, Discovery Services Librarian at the University of Central Florida and a co-sponsor of the NISO proposal. “Such migrations are happening more and more often, affecting end-users, librarians, publishers and vendors and a problem-free migration is the exception rather than the norm. We anticipate that the NISO working group, with all stakeholders represented, will benefit from shared experiences and input from the community.”
“A migration that is well-planned, communicated and coordinated with customers and well-executed will deliver content on a new platform with no broken links or loss of functionality, no interruption of access and no loss of customer information,” adds Kimberly Steinle, Library Relations Manager at Duke University Press and anther proposal co-sponsor. “Migrations can be complex with many things to track, from customer holdings to particularities of EZProxy and other authentication methodologies, to user accounts and security settings. The deliverables from this working group will raise awareness and fill gaps, creating smoother experiences for customers and end users alike.”
NISO’s Associate Director of Programs, Nettie Lagace, notes, “NISO is eager to begin this work to develop standard processes for those responsible for handling and communicating specifics about upcoming platform migrations. Just as NISO developed recommended practices for the handling of transfers of journal titles between publishers, a set of guidelines and checklists for how best to handle content migrations will be of enormous aid to the various stakeholders. Just one example might be a checklist for actions that librarians might want to handle before a transition – tasks like pulling usage statistics from an old platform or entitlement information.” Those interested in participating in the working group now being formed should contact Lagace at nlagace@niso.org.
About NISO
NISO, based in Baltimore, MD, fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of information standards. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO website.
