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NISO Publishes Final Recommended Practices for KBART Automation

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the formal publication of recommended practices for KBART Automation: Automated Retrieval of Customer Electronic Holdings (NISO RP-26-2019). This Recommended Practice supports the timely exchange of accurate, library-specific KBART-formatted holdings reports between content providers’ access control systems and knowledge bases, allowing knowledge base-powered systems to more accurately reflect content accessible at a particular institution and its unique holdings, with little interaction or ongoing maintenance from library staff. The KBART acronym stands for Knowledge Bases and Related Tools.

“Working group members reviewed closely the comments received in late 2018 and the final result is most satisfying,” notes Stephanie Doellinger, co-chair of the KBART Automation Working Group and Senior Metadata Operations Manager at OCLC. “We’re confident that libraries and content providers will mutually benefit from these recommendations for consistent updates of holdings data and support for an automated exchange of that data. Adoption of this NISO Recommended Practice will smooth the workflow for both”

“Users will be presented with information on content that is immediately accessible to them at the point of need. Updated knowledge bases in turn drive increased usage, an important consideration for content providers,” comments Oliver Pesch, Chief Product Strategist at EBSCO Information Services and the other co-chair of the KBART Automation Working Group. “Knowledge base providers won’t have to create custom solutions for each content provider, reducing costs and improving efficiencies.”

“KBART Automation is an excellent example of how cross-sector collaboration among NISO members can improve processes for every stakeholder in the information community,” says Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs. “Looking to the future, the NISO KBART Standing Committee will coordinate with KBART Automation developments to ensure that future KBART published practices cover the gamut of requirements for this important NISO publication.”

The published version of the recommended practice may be found at the KBART Automation web page at: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/kbart/kbart-automation

About NISO
NISO, based in Baltimore, MD, 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.

Contact(s)

Nettie Lagace

Associate Executive Director

Nettie Lagace is the Associate Executive Director at NISO, where she is responsible for facilitating the work of NISO's topic committees and development groups for standards and best practices, and