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For the past 15 years or more, the close of the American Library Association's (ALA) annual conference has been my own unofficial end of summer. Normally, May and June were the busiest conference season, with a string of gatherings from ISO's TC 46 plenary meeting and NISO's own Board of Directors meeting to conferences hosted by the alphabet of soup of related organizations in our community--MLA, SSP, CSE, NASIG, SLA, AAUP, ARL. One can't attend each meeting, but most years, I attended a majority of them. Wrapping everything up every June is the ALA meeting, which is always a busy conference for the NISO staff. When it is over, we collectively breathe a large sigh of relief, take a very brief moment, and then dive right back into planning the fall, the next year, and beyond.

During the ALA meeting, NISO hosted its Annual Meeting and Update session. Please see here for slides from the event, and feel free to contact me regarding the annual report if you would like more details. Our annual meeting always offers an excellent opportunity to reflect, mid-year, on the progress we have made and that we have a lot to be proud of. Among the great things we can reflect on so far this year have been the draft release of two new efforts, NISO Issues in Vocabulary Management and our Standards Tag Suite. We have launched six new projects. Importantly, we are working toward some valuable reorganization of our standards portfolio and leadership; that reorganization is nearly complete and should lay the groundwork for continued advances in our pace and portfolio scope.

Over the past year, we have added nine new voting members, including several large organizations just in the past month. We have also added seven new Library Standards Alliance members to the organization since the beginning of 2017. Welcome and thank you to all of those new members! Looking forward, we are planning the launch of a redesigned website this fall, the release of a new online publication, and a fresh educational program format.

I recall a time early in my career when summer was a time to relax. The New York publishing tradition of "summer hours" was in force at three of the publishers I worked for before NISO. Sadly, the world now seems to move at a breakneck pace and we are all moving constantly from the last thing to the next big project. But research has pointed to the fact that this pace can be both unhealthy, stressful, and, despite all appearances, less productive.

I do have plans to dig into a few books this summer. One that I recommend to you all is Bobbi Newman and Bonnie Tijerina's LITA Guide, Protecting Patron Privacy. Though it is perhaps not the lightest beach read, it is an important introduction to the privacy issues facing libraries and how technological changes impact those concerns. Another book on my summer reading list is one I picked up at ALA, Corey Doctorow's new Walkaway: A Novel, which, based on his prior writings, will be thought provoking. Finally, I'm fascinated by the implications of genetic editing, so I'm planning to dig into A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution by Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg. I hope each of you has time to settle back at the beach or by the pool with a cool drink and a great book. In the end, getting authors' ideas into the hands and minds of readers and users is what NISO is trying to make more efficient. Enjoy!

Sincerely,

Todd Carpenter

Executive Director

NISO Reports

Media Stories

Reuters Institute Digital News Report 2017

Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, June 22, 2017; by Nic Newman with Richard Fletcher, Antonis Kalogeropoulos, David A. L. Levy and Rasmus Kleis Nielsen

Each year, the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism releases an analysis of trends in digital news consumption. While the idea of "fake news" features heavily in this year's report, it also delves into technology trends. Among the findings are that news is now accessed on mobile devices more than on regular computers in an increasing number of countries; there has been a notable increase in the number of mobile news aggregators; smartphones are now as important for news access at home as on the go; and voice-activated digital assistants are emerging as a force in news delivery.

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Digital Book Publishing in the AAUP Community

The Association of American University Presses, June 2, 2017

NISO member AAUP presents here the results of a survey of 64 member presses. The report includes sections on general digital book publishing questions, formats and production workflow issues, and digital discovery and marketing.

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Variations in Databases Used to Assess Academic Output and Citation Impact

New England Journal of Medicine, June 22, 2017; by Natalie M. Plana, Jonathan P. Massie, Jonathan M. Bekisz, Stuart Spore, J. Rodrigo Diaz-Siso, Roberto L. Flores, M.D., and New York University Langone Medical Center

This letter is from the authors of an article published by NISO member New England Journal of Medicine. The letter and the article describe the authors' analysis of PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, and Google Scholar data regarding the entire faculty cohort at New York University Medical Center. The databases examined each showed a different number of publications for the same faculty member, and the authors of the NEJM letter describe how to avoid this career-hampering problem.

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Discovery: Finding the Way Forward

Research Information, June/July 2017; by Rebecca Pool

Pool describes efforts by several publishers to improve their metadata with the goal of providing a better discovery experience. In the article, Mike Roberts, of Emerald Publishing, UK, describes his company's extra step: publicizing its improved metadata using product-specific checklists and NISO's Open Discovery Initiative (ODI).

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"Reimagining the Digital Monograph" White Paper Released

ITHAKA, June 12, 2017

JSTOR Labs has released the final version of its "Reimagining the Digital Monograph," which includes, says parent organization ITHAKA, "detailed user profiles based on ethnographic studies of six humanities scholars, clarified descriptions of thirteen principles for redesigning the digital monograph, a new five-page landscape review of ebook initiatives, and a full bibliography of works cited along with sources for the design thinking and lean startup techniques applied." A draft version of the white paper was released in December 2016 and commented upon by NISO's Jill O'Neill..

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New and Proposed Specs and Standards

Recent W3C Announcements on XSLT and CSS

W3C's XSLT Working Group has published a new recommendation, XSL Transformations (XSLT) Version 3.0. "XSLT 3.0 enables transformations to be performed in streaming mode, where neither the source document nor the result document is ever held in memory in its entirety," explains the organization. Also newly released by W3C is a first public working draft of CSS Overflow Module Level 4, which relates to the handling of overflow content in visual media.

Benetech Establishes Global Certified Accessible Program

Benetech, in conjunction with Dedicon, the Royal National Institute of Blind People, and Vision Australia, has announced Global Certified Accessible, which Benetech notes is "the first third-party ebook verification program for accessible content." Global Certified Accessible supports publisher efforts to create accessible materials for readers in K-12 and post-secondary institutions.

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CEN and CENELEC Lay the Foundation for the Digital Economy

The European Committee for Standardization (CEN) and the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC) have adopted a Strategic Plan for Digital Transformation, which focuses on creating standards for the digital economy and digitally transforming CEN and CENELEC. The plan (which has not yet been released) and information on related pilot projects will be proposed for adoption in the European General Assemblies this month.

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Current ISO Ballots

NISO Voting Members participate in the development, revision, and evaluation of standards. Voting Members are able to influence the standards process and mold the future of the industry. The following ballots are open and will close in the near future. If you are a NISO Voting Member, log into your NISO page and you'll see the ballots linked there.

  • Systematic review of ISO 13008, Digital records conversion and migration process

    This International Standard specifies the planning issues, requirements and procedures for the conversion and/or migration of digital records (which includes digital objects plus metadata) in order to preserve the authenticity, reliability, integrity and usability of such records as evidence of business transactions. These digital records can be active or residing in a repository.

    This ballot closes on August 24, 2017.

  • Systematic review of ISO 27730, International standard collection identifier

    This International Standard establishes the specifications for the International Standard Collection Identifier (ISCI) as a unique international identification system for each collection, fonds and (archival) series, and part(s) of collections, fonds and series. This International Standard establishes the specifications for the structure of an identifier and promotes the use of the identifier with regard to identifying systems that already exist. It also gives a list of recommended metadata elements that describe a collection.

    This ballot closes on August 25, 2017.

  • Systematic review of ISO 26324, Digital object identifier system

    This International Standard specifies the syntax, description and resolution functional components of the digital object identifier system, and the general principles for the creation, registration and administration of DOI names (where DOI is an acronym for "digital object identifier"). This International Standard defines the syntax for a DOI name, which is used for the identification of an object of any material form (digital or physical) or an abstraction (such as a textual work) where there is a functional need to distinguish it from other objects.

    This ballot closes on August 28, 2017.

Results of Recent Ballots

ISO members approved two ballots since the last issue of Newsline.

TC 46/SC 9 ISO/DIS 20247, Information and documentation -- International library item identifier (ILII)

This international standard specifies the International Library Item Identifier (ILII) which is used for the unique identification of items held by libraries and related organizations. "Library and related organization" here refers to an organization within the scope of ISO 15511, Information and documentation - International standard identifier for libraries and related organizations (ISIL). "Items" here refer to materials identified and managed by a concerned organization. Digital objects to which the organization holds only access rights (e.g., electronic journals) are excluded from the definition of "items" in this context.

The purpose of ILII is to facilitate unique identification of library items when information about them is shared among library applications. Examples of such system(s) include interlibrary loan and shared print agreements.

ISO/FDIS 3297 (Ed 5), Information and documentation -- International standard serial number (ISSN)

This document defines and promotes the use of a standard code (ISSN) for the unique identification of serials and other continuing resources.

Each International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is a unique identifier for a specific serial or other continuing resource in a defined medium. This document also describes a mechanism, the "linking ISSN (ISSN-L)", that provides for collocation or linking among the different media versions of the same continuing resource.

ISSN are applicable to serials and to other continuing resources, whether past, present or to be published or produced in the foreseeable future, whatever the medium of publication or production.

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