NISO Identifies Emerging Trends and Strategic Directions for Future Standards Work

Baltimore, MD - January 12, 2015 - The Architecture Committee of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has issued a NISO Strategic Directions document that identifies the trends and emerging themes that will direct the future development portfolios of standards and recommended practices. In 2007, NISO created a new governance structure and, as part of this restructuring, implemented the NISO Framework, an overarching model and roadmap for NISO's standards work. Seven years later, NISO continues to structure the standards portfolio around the core areas of Content and Collection Management, Business Information, and Discovery and Delivery—with a Topic Committee providing leadership for each area. The Architecture Committee determines overall strategic vision for NISO's work, oversees the work of the Topic Committees, and addresses any overlapping areas. The 2015 Strategic Directions document reflects a review by the Topic Committees of their current and recent portfolios, and a discussion of potential future activities where NISO should be involved in the development of new standards and recommended practices.
"The Architecture Committee launched the strategic directions initiative with a community survey to gather opinions on the key challenges facing our constituents over the next three years," explains Michael Teets, OCLC Vice President Strategy, Governance and Architecture, and Vice Chair of the NISO Board of Directors and Chair of the NISO Architecture Committee. "This input was used by the Topic Committees along with their own knowledge and research to determine where NISO can make the most impact in the community through the development of new standards or recommended practices."

"The strategic planning done by the Architecture Committee and Topic Committees has further validated the NISO Framework developed in 2007," states Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. "This effort has also shown there are many areas where the development and adoption of standards can be very valuable to our community. NISO will continue to pursue projects in these areas, and will encourage participation from libraries, content providers, and system vendors as these projects are advanced."

The NISO 2015 Strategic Directions document is available on the NISO website at: www.niso.org/publications/strategic2015/

About NISO
NISO 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 an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org.