NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) Standing Committee to Replace Former Maintenance Agency

Comments and suggestions welcome for continuous maintenance of the standard

Baltimore, MD – November 19, 2013 – The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the replacement of the maintenance agency for the two-part American National Standard on the NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP), ANSI/NISO Z39.83, with a Standing Committee for ongoing maintenance of the standard. NCIP addresses the need for interoperability among disparate circulation, interlibrary loan, consortial borrowing, and self-service applications by standardizing the exchange of messages between and among computer-based applications. The NCIP protocol is widely supported in integrated library systems (ILS) and resource sharing software.

"Maintenance agencies were typically established for certain types of information system standards where the community requires implementation support and the tracking and resolution of problem reports," explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for Programs. "In 2009, NISO moved the NCIP standard to continuous maintenance, which allows for regular submittal and review of proposed changes and more frequent updating of the standard. The NCIP Implementers Group was changed at that time to a Standing Committee to oversee the continuous maintenance process. In 2013, EnvisionWare, who had been the Maintenance Agency for the standard decided to step down from that role and the NCIP Standing Committee has agreed to take over its responsibilities."

"Staff at EnvisionWare are to be commended for the excellent oversight they provided for the NCIP standard for many years," states Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. "They took an active role in promoting the use of the standard and have worked hand-in-hand with the Implementers Group and Standing Committee to ensure the standard remains current."

"The NCIP Standing Committee has taken over responsibility for the ncip.info website," states Mike Dicus, Product Manager, Ex Libris, and Chair of the NCIP Standing Committee. "A number of supporting tools and documentation have been developed to aid in implementation. These include an XML schema that matches the implementation profile defined in Part 2 of the standard, an Introduction to NCIP to provide librarians and other implementers with a basic introduction to NCIP, and links to sources of additional information about the standard. The NCIP Core Message Set defines a minimal set of nine messages (out of the full set of 45) that supports the majority of the current functionality for resource sharing and self-service applications and provides a simpler starting point for new implementers.

The NCIP standard and the supporting tools and documentation are freely available at: www.ncip.info/.

About NISO
NISO, based in Baltimore, Maryland, 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 information standards. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO website: www.niso.org.