Working Group Connection, April 2023: Projects via Information Policy & Analysis Topic Committee

Co-chairs of the IPA topic committee are: Todd Digby (University of Florida) and Jack Maness (University of Denver).

Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP) Working Groups

Collections Development and Selection Working Group
Co-chairs: Eva Jurczyk (University of Toronto), Bill Maltarich (New York University)

Infrastructure Working Group
Co-chairs: Rob Cartolano (Columbia University Libraries), Kris Maloney (Big10 Academic Alliance (BTAA), Rutgers University)

Organizational Strategy and Governance Working Group
Co-chairs: Mike Gorrell (Index Data), Boaz Nadav-Manes (Lehigh University)
Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

CCLIP Working Groups will develop a NISO Recommended Practice (based on an open standards architecture) that, overall, will support the flow of data about distinct library collections. The Recommended Practice will document exchange protocols that will describe gathering, normalizing, and exchanging holdings information, contractual information, retention obligations, and usage data. The CCLIP model will also include aggregation of library staff and subject matter expertise, local/consortial/group-based insights, and publisher/marketplace information necessary to support collaborative decisions at both the local and cross-institutional levels.

Initial planned CCLP applications based on these recommendations may include: A) An aggregated shared index and knowledge base in which libraries/publishers can share data about their collections and expertise; B) A discovery mechanism for library staff to support searching and browsing for content, information, and human resources; C) A communication application that will support interactions across institutions; D) Data aggregation, visualization, and reporting; E) Negotiation and group purchasing decision support protocols. The group will also review existing standards and protocols for the exchange of this information and, wherever possible, will adapt these extant best practices to this process, or recommend additional changes to those existing specifications.

Following its approved work item by NISO Voting Members and a call for participation following an informational workshop, the first three CCLIP working groups have been established. The first three groups, Collections Development and Selection, Infrastructure, and Organizational Strategy and Governance, will work to develop a foundation for the project to be built upon by additional working groups to be formed later in the year.

The groups have had their initial meetings and will be working to develop their individual work plans over the next month.  

NISO hosted a public webinar describing the project in January. 

Content Platform Migrations Working Group

Working Group Web page 
Publication: RP-38-2021, Content Platform Migrations

NISO published this recommended practice in November 2021. This effort focused on improving communications between stakeholders when a publisher moves content from one hosting platform to another. The document lists the core concepts, approaches, and tasks to facilitate a successful migration with minimal disruption to the libraries and other vendors affected, as well as the publisher itself and the content platform vendors. Ultimately, end users enjoy the most benefit from stakeholder adoption of the principles outlined in the Recommended Practice, as their access to necessary content is unimpeded. 

The main document provides context, descriptions, and definitions. Each section concludes with recommendations related to each topic, with bulleted lists of example tasks for each stakeholder group. The recommendations are also provided as a Checklist in a spreadsheet, so they can be sorted, filtered, and customized. Both versions of the Recommendations identify the stakeholder that is likely to have responsibility for a given task.

A NISO Standing Committee will take over the work of promotion and support of the Recommended Practice. If you are interested in participating, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Executive Director.

SeamlessAccess

Project Website

NISO provides support and expertise to the SeamlessAccess project in the form of leadership on several working groups and membership on the governance committee of the project. SeamlessAccess is designed to enable a more streamlined access experience for federated authentication across scholarly and research information infrastructures, and works to make all of federated authentication a better experience for users. 

Since our last update in September, the Seamless Access project has been hard at work dealing with authentication issues arising from upcoming major browser vendor changes. Late last year, it came to the attention of the group that Google, Mozilla, and Apple are working to introduce features that prevent tracking of users across the web, for example, from one web domain to another. Most significantly, these browsers will soon:

  • Obfuscate IP addresses, rendering on-site IP and IP proxy authentication unusable 
  • Prevent adding information that identifies a user to URLs when navigating among websites (a type of "link decoration")
  • Block third-party cookies and local browser storage that currently support the movement of an authenticated user from one site to another

Seamless Access has worked on a series of communications about this work, most centrally:

This work has spawned secondary working groups that Seamless Access is a part of and helping to organize/work with:

And the related ALA Core Federated Authentication Committee has also written its own library-focused post detailing some of the changes, which can be found in ALA Connect.

SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding) Standing Committee

SERU Standing Committee Web page
Publication: 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 website pages are available to help publishers and libraries understand and use the SERU material and NISO continues to add more libraries and publishers to the SERU Registry upon request. 

Transfer Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Sophia Anderton (BJU International), Linda Wobbe (SCELC) 
Transfer Standing Committee Web page 
Publication: Transfer Recommended Practice (NISO RP-24-2019)

The most recent version of the Transfer Code of Practice, Version 4 was published in 2019. Transfer helps publishers ensure that content remains accessible by readers and librarians when a journal or set of journals is transferred between parties, and supports a smooth process with minimal disruption. Publishers are asked to endorse the Code of Practice and to abide by its principles wherever it is commercially reasonable to do so. Supporting publishers are included in a list of endorsers on the Transfer website. The Transfer Alerting Service, sponsored by the ISSN Agency, facilitates communication about journal transfers and includes a database where details about transfers can be searched. 

The members of the Transfer Standing Committee, who meet bi-monthly, are responsible for encouraging publisher endorsement and planning outreach, education and training activities. These continue at industry conferences where members meet publishers in person and talk to them about Transfer directly. Since last year, the Standing Committee has been immersed in discussions around the next version of Transfer, reviewing new use scenarios--such as those involving open access details, such as transformative agreements--and inspecting Transfer elements and procedures that may need to be updated in light of these industry development. New text continues to be developed and reviewed; a draft Transfer version 5 may be available this year.  

Linda Wobbe provided an update at the Charleston Conference in November and as part of the NISO Update at NISO Plus in February.  Christine Davidian included Transfer in her discussion of library workflows at ER&L in March. 

Z39.7 Data Dictionary Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Martha Kyrillidou (QualityMetrics), Joe Zucca (University of Pennsylvania)
Z39.7 Standing Committee

The purpose of ANSI/NISO Z39.7-2013 Information Services and Use: Metrics & Statistics for Libraries and Information Providers - 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 which are then reviewed by the Standing Committee during its conference 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. 

Most recently, the Z39.7 Standing Committee has just finalized a new draft of the standard. It is expected that this updated draft will be made available to NISO Voting Members for their approval in the coming months. After subsequent ANSI approval, it is hoped that the updated standard will be published this year. In the meantime, the Standing Committee has assembled resources for a separate appendix to the standard which will capture ongoing work (projects and tools) related to assessment and has been discussing recent meetings of interest and updates to various industry surveys.

New Project: Unique Electronic Resource Package Identifiers

Work Item Approved by NISO Voting Members

E-resources are frequently purchased as packages, which can range in size from a handful of titles to hundreds of thousands. Currently, these packages can only be identified by their name in the supply chain, within elements such as invoices, publisher websites, knowledge bases, etc. However, names are inherently ambiguous, so this causes problems that affect all stakeholders—libraries, content providers and platforms, knowledge base providers, and even users.

The NISO Unique Electronic Resource Package Identifiers Working Group will evaluate and create recommendations for a unique identifier to enable disambiguation between packages, which can be used across the supply chain. This identifier will allow all stakeholders to streamline and simplify their processes, and to more easily track changes. It will also provide libraries with clear information about which titles a package contains, enabling them, for example, to manage claims when journals move between publishers. 

NISO expects to convene the working group later this year.  For more information contact Nettie Lagace.

Abstract

Recent activity of the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project; Content Platform Migrations Working Group; SeamlessAccess; SERU; Transfer; and Z39.7.