NISO Publishes Revised Recommendations for Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART)

Revision adds recommendations on metadata for consortia, open access materials, e-books, and conference proceedings

Baltimore, MD - April 7, 2014 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a revision to the Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2014). The original recommended practice, issued in 2010, provided all parties in the information supply chain with straightforward guidance about metadata formatting—focused mainly on journal resources—to ensure the exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers. Building on the initial recommendations, the revision includes the more granular, complex issues that cause problems in metadata supply, including consortia-specific metadata and metadata transfer for open access publications, e-books, and conference proceedings.
"The value of the KBART format is that it can be used for both human-readable and machine-readable purposes and can be a low cost approach to effective knowledge base metadata transfer for publishers," states Magaly Bascones, Data Manager at Jisc Collections and Co-chair of the KBART Working Group. "Since the first Recommended Practice was issued, over 75 publishers and content providers have endorsed KBART and demonstrated their commitment to good quality metadata provision. With implementation of the KBART recommendations, users can be assured that the providers' metadata is trusted and has the required level of granularity without the burdensome task of title-by-title checking. All of the existing endorsements will go through an updating procedure to ensure conformance with the revised Recommended Practice."

"The experience of endorsing publishers and feedback from a survey of libraries and consortia identified the areas of focus for this expanded KBART revision," explains Chad Hutchens, University of Wyoming Libraries Head of Digital Collections and Digital Resources Librarian, and Co-chair of the KBART Working Group. "Historically, it has been difficult for libraries and linking vendors to obtain accurate title list data for customized consortia packages and the new KBART recommendations encourage content providers to establish metadata feeds specific to these packages. The recommendations also address some of the unique needs for open access publications, e-books, and conference proceedings by updating some of the required and optional metadata fields included in a KBART transmission."

"The KBART project will now be transferred to Standing Committee status within NISO," states Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. "This Committee will be responsible for managing the endorsement process, providing ongoing education and promotion of KBART, and maintaining the Information Hub on the NISO website that provides supporting materials about KBART—including the KBART Glossary, endorsement information, a registry of knowledge base supply chain contacts, and background information on OpenURL and knowledge bases."

The KBART Recommended Practice and the KBART Information Hub with its supporting materials are available on the NISO website at: www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart.

About NISO
NISO 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 an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org. For more information please contact NISO on (301) 654-2512 or via email on nisohq@niso.org.