Baltimore, MD -- The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) have today announced a proposed combination, designed to better serve their members, during a time of rapid change.
The respective boards of NISO and NFAIS have unanimously approved moving ahead with the merger proposal, which is conditional on NFAIS member approval. The merged entity sees significant opportunities for enriched and invigorated programming, delivered in a more efficient and innovative way, to the combined group’s 250-plus members.
The combined association will be more effective and influential within the community of publishers, information distributors, libraries, government agencies, and technology partners who make up the membership. Participants are expected to see greater benefits, while most organizations who are currently members of both organizations will also see a reduction in dues as a single entity.
More people from diverse sectors of our industry will have the opportunity to engage in both the networking hub activities NFAIS traditionally led, as well as in the technical work that has been NISO’s focus. It is proposed that the combined organization will maintain the NISO name whilst keeping various NFAIS initiatives, such as its high-profile Annual Conference and its Humanities Roundtable program.
NISO traces its history back to 1939 and is a non-profit standards organization that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing and library applications. It draws its membership equally from libraries, content creators, and service providers. It will celebrate its 80th anniversary in June.
NFAIS was established in 1958, with its roots dating back to President Eisenhower’s administration. Then, the National Science Foundation was given a mandate to ensure the provision of indexing, abstracting, translation and other information retrieval services reached the highest possible standards. Since then it has served a broader coalition of information services entities.
Deanna Marcum, President, NFAIS Board of Directors, says, “Speaking with a single voice, this new organization will be more effective and influential in the larger community of content creation, distribution and discovery.”
Todd Carpenter, Executive Director of NISO, says, “NFAIS has a great history of convening events that bring people together. NISO has a strong track record of dealing with the details of developing and implementing technology solutions. Our shared future is about connecting ideas with grass roots implementation, to serve our members and maximise the impact of our community and its vital role in society today.”
About NISO (www.niso.org):
The National Information Standards Organization (NISO), a Baltimore, MD based non-profit association, 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 internationally with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of information standards. NISO is an American National Standards Institute (ANSI) accredited standards development organization.
About NFAIS (www.nfais.org):
The National Federation of Advanced Information Services ( NFAIS™) is a global, nonprofit, volunteer-powered membership organization that serves the information community—that is, all those who create, aggregate, organize, and otherwise provide ease of access to and effective navigation and use of authoritative, credible information. Member organizations represent a cross-section of content and technology providers, including database creators, publishers, libraries, host systems, information technology developers, content management providers and other related groups. They embody a true partnership of commercial, nonprofit and government organizations that embraces a common mission—to build the world's knowledge base through enabling research and managing the flow of scholarly communication. NFAIS exists to promote the success of its members and for more than 50 years has provided a forum in which to address common interests through education and advocacy.
For more information, contact Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director,, on 301-654-2512 or via email to tcarpenter@niso.org or Deanna Marcum, NFAIS Board President, via email to deanna.marcum@ithaka.org, or Keith Webster, NISO Board Chair, via email to kwebster@andrew.cmu.edu.
