Earlier this week, I received a marketing email from one of the hotel loyalty programs I participate in. The email touted my "Year in Review" and it pointed out to me all I have "accomplished" in staying at their hotel chain. First of all, I didn't need to be reminded of my travel schedule and how often I am not with my family, especially while I am away on trips. But more importantly, the figures that the email touted had really nothing to do with what I had accomplished. The email simply counted up the things that make me valuable to the hotel chain, but not the value that was generated from the trips: the people I met, the projects that were discussed and advanced, the people whom I educated about NISO efforts, the new memberships that were forged, or the people who were served by all of NISO's collective efforts. These are the things that matter, not how many nights it took or how many cities I've visited. The real purposes of the time spent out of the office and the real goals I've sought to achieve are what I want to quantify.
I've been thinking a lot about metrics lately, in part because of conversations during several meetings this fall, which covered areas from alternative metrics to metrics for data sets. A project led by DataCite, DataONE, and the California Digital Library, called Making Data Count, is being pushed forward by analytics collection and data aggregation efforts. Further work on traditional public library metrics is being advanced by IMLS and COSLA in an effort called Measures that Matter. Of course, more on metrics will be discussed during the NISO virtual conference on Advancing Altmetrics next Wednesday.
When we look back on the past year, as people often do in December, it is worth reflecting on what metrics we apply and how we assess our achievement relative to those metrics. Are we really assessing things of value or simply measuring those things about which data are easily captured? Standards can help define what is measured and how those data are collected, distributed, and analyzed. NISO has been involved in a variety of metrics-related efforts that aim to define what gets counted and how those data are gathered.
Unfortunately, these quantifiable things aren't always correlated with the values that an organization deems most important. To take a simple example, we can easily quantify searches in a discovery service, but if the number of queries increases, does that mean we are providing a useful service? What if someone has to query seven or eight times to find the item they are seeking? That isn't really serving the patron's needs; it is quantifying the failure to meet those needs.
So, as we draw the year to a close, let us reflect on the things that bring real value to our institutions, our roles, and our lives more generally. If we aren't focused on those things and trying to measure them appropriately, it is easy to head down the wrong path. We need metrics that point us in the right directions and for which we can reward ourselves when we've achieved our true goals.
By those metrics, I hope each of you ends the year in peace, in health, and with prosperity.
NISO Reports
Media Stories
Big Deal Cancellation Tracking
SPARC, "a global coalition committed to making Open the default for research and education," has released a journal big deal cancellation tracker. The tracker offers a table that allows institutions to list their progress with dropping journal package deals, with columns for institution name, date, region, the publisher(s) involved, strategic considerations, outcome, and money saved. SPARC also offers to help institutions that are interested in taking steps to cancel big deals.
Unrestricted Text and Data Mining with "allofPLOS"
Scholars performing text and data mining require large bodies of material to analyze. The new allofPLOS project offers just such a corpus of text--more than 200,000 fully open research articles, says the organization. Each article's metadata and text is made available as a single XML file, in accordance, notes PLOS, with ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite.
Net Neutrality Protections Eliminated in Draft FCC Order
ALA's Washington, DC office weighs in on the FCC's plan to drop current rules that "require internet service providers to treat all internet traffic and services equally." The article notes that legal challenges are likely ahead and promises a related follow-up post.
Best JASIST Paper of the Decades
The Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) is celebrating its 80th anniversary. As part of the celebration, the society sought member and other input on the best paper from each decade of the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology (JASIST).
New and Proposed Specs and Standards
Survey on Current and New Usage of ISSN
Are you a regular user of ISSN? If so, the ISO Working Group that will revise the ISSN standard in 2018 requests that you complete a short survey that looks at the make-up and function of the current standard. The survey can be found at https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Z3D5XX5.
Inera, Inc. Launches eXtyles STS
Inera has launched eXtyles STS, a product that supports the use of the recently released ANSI/NISO Z39.102-2017, Standards Tag Suite (NISO STS). Inera explains that eXtyles, "allows standards publishers to adopt this new 'standard for standards' while allowing their committees to continue drafting documents in Microsoft Word."
British Standard for Information Security Risk Revised
BSI has revised BS 7799-3 Guidelines for information security risk management, which "provides guidance on defining, applying, maintaining and evaluating risk management processes in the information security context." BS 7799-3 advises on application of the ISO 27001, Information security management system group of standards.
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 before the next issue of Newsline. If you are a NISO Voting Member, log into your NISO page and you'll see the ballots linked there.
ISO/FDIS 3901, Information and documentation - International Standard Recording Code (ISRC)
The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC) is a standard identifying code that can be used to identify sound recordings and music video recordings so that each such recording can be referred to uniquely and unambiguously. This draft represents a technical revision. This document sets out the format of ISRC, the mechanisms to ensure uniqueness of codes and the ways in which ISRC is to be assigned to recordings.
ISO/IEC PDTS 22424-1 EPUB 2 Preservation - Part 1
This document specifies long term preservation of EPUB publications via a dual strategy. First, it forbids some EPUB features, and requires some others, in order to make sure that the resulting EPUB documents are suitable for preservation.
ISO/IEC PDTS 22424-1 EPUB 2 Preservation - Part 2
This document describes a set of metadata elements recommended for the long-term preservation of EPUB publications. The EPUB version this document applies to is 3.1.
ISO/FDIS 20247, Information and documentation -- International library item identifier (ILII)
This document was developed to provide a standard way to represent an item in various kinds of applications in libraries or related organizations.
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