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Blue Ribbon Panel Paints Vision for NISOs Future

Mellon Foundation Funded Strategic Planning Effort

BETHESDA, MD - June 20, 2005 - A Blue Ribbon Panel of eleven experts from industry, academia, and the library community has issued its strategic planning recommendations to the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). With a charter to evaluate NISO's progress, challenges, and opportunities, the Panel played a central role in a yearlong strategic planning exercise, which NISO's Board of Directors launched in May 2004. Actions recommended by the Panel fall into three, primary areas: constituencies and relationships, the changing standards lifecycle, and organizational strategies and business practices.
Clifford Lynch, Panel Chair and Executive Director of the Coalition for Networked Information, stated, "As I think the committee report makes clear, our consensus was that what NISO does is so important, if it ceased to exist, the information community would find it mandatory to fill its functions through another organization." Lynch is well-known in the information community for his contributions to building understanding of the potential new technologies offer by enriching the research and learning process.

"We are extremely grateful to the Blue Ribbon Panel members who provided valuable guidance to the NISO Board. That such an impressive roster of community leaders agreed to participate in NISO's strategic planning effort is an indication of the continuing importance of standards to the information world that NISO serves," said Jan Peterson, NISO Board Chair and VP of Content Development for Infotrieve, Inc. "We also appreciate the grant provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in support of the Blue Ribbon Panel and related activities."

The Panel's report, posted at http://www.niso.org/members/secure/BRPrpt05.pdf suggests actions such as the following:

  • Participation of academic institutions as a whole, rather than just their libraries
  • Exploitation of NISO's expertise in community building, as demonstrated in such thriving activities as the Metasearch Initiative
  • Building on NISO's own process innovations, such as issuing draft standards for trial use

The NISO Board's formal response to the Panel findings is also posted at this site. NISO invites all interested parties to comment on the Panel report and the Board's response.

In addition to Chairman Clifford Lynch, the Panel included (in alphabetical order) Lorcan Dempsey, Vice President of Research, OCLC, Inc.; Karen Hunter, Senior Vice President, Elsevier Science, New York, NY; Ron Larsen, Dean, School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh; Sarah Ann Long, Director of the North Suburban Library System, Wheeling, Illinois; Deanna Marcum, Associate Librarian for Library Services, Library of Congress; Eric Miller, Semantic Web Activity Lead, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C); Kent Smith, Retired, former Deputy Director, National Library of Medicine; Diana Oblinger, Vice President for EDUCAUSE; Jenny Walker, Vice President Marketing and Business Development, Information Services Division, Ex Libris (USA), Newton, MA; and Ann Wolpert, Director of Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

About NISO

NISO, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation. NISO Standards, information about NISO's activities and membership are featured on the NISO website http://www.niso.org.

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