NISO TR-06-2017, Issues in Vocabulary Management

The intent of this Technical Report is to provide a background on vocabulary management for those operating in this transitional environment, where experience with policies, social constructs, and the practical aspects of moving forward using a common infrastructure tends to be scattered or missing. Other agencies—the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) in particular—have more specialized expertise in technical areas, and though there are overlaps with NISO’s effort, the W3C is better positioned to build and maintain the technical standards in this space.

The audiences for this technical report start with the communities NISO has brought together: libraries, publishers, and service providers. But beyond these communities, we hope this document may help the many individuals and groups building and sharing bibliographic and other descriptive data, as well as knowledge managers within a variety of organizations using vocabularies to solve problems. And as governments at all levels move their services to the web, joining non-profits and profit-making enterprises, new needs arise for appropriate vocabulary development and maintenance policies as well as practical information on building quality and sustainability strategies. It is for these groups that this document is intended.