Recently Featured on the NISO Homepage
NISO Announces 2010 Fall Schedule of Educational Programs (June 23, 2010)
NISO's schedule of educational programs for the second half of 2010, includes six webinars; free monthly open teleconferences; an in-person forum; and a joint NISO/DCMI webinar on Augus 25. A "buy 4 and get 2 free" webinar discount program s available for organizations interested in having staff participate in multiple events. NISO's webinars are held on the second Wednesday of each month, except July. A two-part webinar is planned for consecutive Wednesdays in September. An in-person forum on E-Resource Management: From Start to Finish (and Back Again) will be held on October 7th in Chicago, IL. Free teleconferences will be held on the second Monday of every month (except July) to discuss projects underway in NISO. The full schedule of events is available here.
NISO Publishes Special Digital Preservation Issue of Information Standards Quarterly (June 22, 2010)
The just-published Spring 2010 issue of the Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) magazine is a special issue with the theme of Digital Preservation. ISQ is available free to all NISO members and by subscription. Individual issue copies may also be purchased as supplies last (US: $36; international: $45). Selected articles from each issue are made available for free download. Visit the NISO ISQ webpage (www.niso.org/publications/isq/) for more information. A limited number of ISQ sample issues, including this special issue on Digital Preservation, will be available at the NISO booth (#1410) at the American Library Association (ALA) 2010 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. from June 25-29.
I2 Working Group Releases Midterm Release Document; Comments Requested (June 21, 2010)
NISO's Institutional Identifiers (I2) Working Group has just released for comment a Midterm Work to Date document. The purpose of the Midterm Request for Comments is to provide the Working Group with valuable guidance to complete development of the I2 standard and to undertake midterm course correction, as needed. In addition to describing the purpose and background of the I2 identifier, comments and responses to specific questions are sought in four specific topic areas. Feedback is requested by August 2, 2010.
NISO Announces Six New Standard or Recommended Practice Development Projects (June 18, 2010)
Programs at ALA 2010 Annual Conference to provide more information. There are now more development projects underway than at any time in NISO's history. Experts from interested and affected organizations have volunteered to participate on working groups to develop consensus standards or best practice recommendations for each of the six projects.
IOTA Releases New Logo (June 18, 2010)
See the recently released logo for the IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) Working Group, chaired by Adam Chandler (Cornell University). Visit the IOTA website for the logo and more information on this two-year project.
UKSG and NISO Announce First Endorsers of KBART Recommended Practice (June 1, 2010)
New KBART Phase II Working Group and Co-Chairs Also Revealed
UKSG and NISO are pleased to announce that the American Institute of Physics, Ex Libris, Serials Solutions and OCLC are the first organizations to publicly endorse the Phase I recommendations of the KBART (Knowledge Bases And Related Tools) Working Group, a joint initiative that is exploring data problems within the OpenURL supply chain.
NISO/UKSG KBART Phase II Welcomes New Co-chair (May 19, 2010)
NISO is happy to announce that Andreas Biedenbach (Manager eProduct Operations - The Americas, Springer Science + Business Media) has agreed to assume the role of NISO co-chair of the NISO/UKSG KBART Phase II Working Group. He joins Sarah Pearson (E-Resources & Serials Coordinator, University of Birmingham), who serves as UKSG co-chair for the group and has been key in not only the formation of the group but also in its progress to date. Andreas has been an active member of this group since its inception at the beginning of this year, and now as co-chair will provide additional needed support to Sarah and leadership for the group overall.
Recording Available from NISO May Open Teleconference on Physical Delivery of Library Resources Working Group Update (May 18, 2010)
Valerie Horton (Executive Director Colorado Library Consortium [CLiC]) led a discussion on the work of the Physical Delivery of Library Resources Working Group that is developing a recommended practice on issues related to delivering the physical materials in a library's collection to its patrons or to other libraries.
NISO Welcomes IEEE as a New Voting Member (April 27, 2010)
Headquartered in Piscataway, NJ, IEEE's core purpose is "to foster technological innovation and excellence for the benefit of humanity." Begun in 1884 as the American Institute of Electrical Engineers to support individuals in the new and growing fields of telegraphy and electricity, IEEE's areas of interest have now grown to aerospace, biomedical, computing, consumer electronics, energy, green technology, nanotechnology, robotics, semiconductors, telecommunications, and more. They now have over 395,000 members in more than 160 countries, 38 societies, and 7 technical councils. They are a major publisher with 148 transactions, journals, and magazines, more than 2.5 million documents in the IEEEXplore Digital Library, and over 900 standards. Like NISO, IEEE is an accredited ANSI standards development organization and in addition to their 900+ published standards, they currently have over 400 standards projects in development. IEEE has been one of the leaders in e-learning and developed the widely used Learning Object Metadata (LOM) standard (IEEE 1484.12.1), one of a series of standards developed by the IEEE Learning Technology Standards Committee (LSTC). IEEE Press, in cooperation with John Wiley and Sons (another NISO member), produces the society's technical books, monographs, guides, and textbooks. Some 200 of these are available electronically along with all of IEEE published content since 1988, plus select content dating back to 1950, through their IEEE Xplore digital library. IEEE, along with 13 science and technology societies (including NISO members AGU, AIP, and APS) founded Scitopia (www.scitopia.org), a free federated vertical search portal across the members' databases (now up to 21 societies) to the research most cited in scholarly work and patents. Gerry Grenier, Director, Publishing Technologies, is IEEE's primary voting representative to NISO. Adam Philippidis, Manager, Indexing, is the alternate.
Recording available from NISO April Open Teleconference on Standardized Markup of Journal Articles (April 22, 2010)
During the April NISO Open Teleconference on April 12, 2010, Jeff Beck, at the National Library of Medicine and co-chair of the NISO working group, led a conversation focused on the Standardized Markup for Journal Articles project, the group's work and goals.
First Issue of NISO Working Group Connection Available! (April 15, 2010)
In April, Newsline subscribers began receivin the Working Group Connection, a quarterly supplement to Newsline that provides the latest news from NISO's working groups and committees. NISO currently has more active working groups than ever before in its history. NISO also has two standards in a continuous maintenance mode with standing committees and several published standards have designated maintenance agencies. Working Group Connection will keep you up-to-date on the progress of all of the standards and recommended practices in development and maintenance, letting you know both what is new and what is forthcoming. View the April issue online or subscribe to Newsline to receive it in your inbox.
SUSHI "Getting Started" Guide Adds New Content (April 8, 2010)
Are you just getting started with SUSHI (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2007, The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Protocol)? Visit the "Getting Started" portion of the SUSHI site for help. New to the site is "Getting Started with SUSHI: For Developers of SUSHI Client Applications." Also on the site is Getting Started for librarians and for developers of SUSHI server applications.
NISO Welcomes World Scientific as a New Voting Member (March 31, 2010)
Headquartered in Singapore, World Scientific is one of the leading scientific publishers in the world, and the largest international scientific publisher in the Asia-Pacific region. They publish around 120 journal titles and over 500 monographic titles annually, many of which are textbooks used in major university curriculums. They were awarded the exclusive rights to publish and distribute the entire series of Nobel lectures since 1901 in English and are also the distributor for the U.S.-based National Academies Press in most of Asia. Worldscinet is their electronic journal platform, hosting over 110 journals in a variety of scientific and business disciplines. Worldscinet Archives provide access to the digitized archives of over 50 journals back to the first issue. In 2006, the company launched World Scientific eBooks with access through a customized portal to a collection of digital books that is growing by some 300 titles annually; a content ownership model and archiving options are available for libraries. For more information, visit their website. Chi Wai (Rick) Lee, Assistant General Manager, is World Scientific’s primary voting representative to NISO. Tai Tone Lim, E-Publishing Manager, is the alternate.
NISO Welcomes Two New Voting Members: the American Physical Society and the American Geophysical Union [March 24, 2010]
Founded in 1899, the American Physical Society (APS) has as its objective “the advancement and diffusion of the knowledge of physics” which it accomplishes by publishing research journals, organizing scientific meetings, and implementing education, public affairs and outreach programs. Their flagship journal, Physical Review, began publication in 1893 at Cornell and has evolved to five separate sections to cover the breadth of the field of physics. Their Physical Review Online Archive (PROLA) contains over 389,250 articles, errata, and comments/replies covering of all their journals since inception to 2006, supplementing the electronic subscriptions to the individual title’s most current five years. APS has also joined with the American Institute of Physics (AIP) to offer The Virtual Journals in Science and Technology Series, an online collection with links to papers selected from over 85 journals to highlight the latest developments in six areas of the physical sciences. For more information on APS, visit their website at: www.aps.org. Mark Doyle, Assistant Director, Journal Information Systems, is the APS primary voting representative to NISO. Paul Dlug, Product Development Manager, is the alternate.
Established in 1919 by the National Research Council and independently incorporated in 1972, the American Geophysical Union (AGU) is an international Union of scientists, “dedicated to the furtherance of the geophysical sciences.” In addition to publishing print journals, books, and monographic series, AGU maintains a digital library that includes all but one of its journals (to be added this year) going back to the first issue, but excluding the current five years, which is available for separate lease or purchase. Hundreds of books are also available in the digital library and more are being added as part of a backfile scanning program. Browsing and searching the full library and access to lists of journal articles and book chapters is available without a subscription. AGU provides COUNTER-compliant usage statistics and will begin archiving their journals with Portico in 2010. For more information on AGU, visit their website at: www.agu.org. Carter Glass, Assistant Director of AGU, is the primary voting representative to NISO and Jon Sears, Secondary Services Publisher, is the alternate.
Presentation Slides Available for March Two-Part Webinar on Identifiers: New Problems, New Solutions [March 19, 2010]
PART 1: What’s in a Name? Latest Developments in Identifiers looked at the need for both standard personal and institutional name identifiers in an automated information environment. It provided an update from NISO's Institutional Identifiers (I2) working group, and a member of the RLG Partnership Networking Names Advisory Group addressed how linked data, the latest spin on the Semantic Web and RDF, relates to identifiers. In PART 2: Content Identification: What’s New, three speakers discussed ways that new and familiar content identifiers are being applied in today's environment -- and what we might expect for tomorrow. This included the use of the ISBN for e-books, the Archival Resource Key (ARK), and new applications of the Digital Object Identifier (DOI).
NISO Welcomes Scholarly iQ as a New NISO Voting Member [March 11, 2010]
NISO announces Scholarly iQ as the newest NISO voting member. Headquartered in Texas, Scholarly iQ provides web analytics and usage reporting for publishers and librarians. They have been supplying COUNTER-compliant reports since 2002 and are Release 3 compliant. Their CEO and founder, Gary Van Overborg, was recently elected to serve on COUNTER's International Advisory board. Scholarly iQ has also fully implemented support for the SUSHI protocol (ANSI/NISO Z39.93) that automates retrieval of COUNTER data for libraries, and they are active participants in the SUSHI developers group. For publishers, their services go well beyond the COUNTER data. Using state-of-the-art data integration, web analytics, and data visualization tools, Scholarly iQ is able to provide publishers with a full picture of their products’ usage, incorporating both online and offline data. Gary Van Overborg, is the primary representative to NISO. John Milligan, Director of Application Development, is the secondary representative. For more information visit their website at: www.scholarlyiq.com
Recording Available from Open Teleconference of ERM Data Standards and Best Practices Review Working Group Update [March 9. 2010]
During this call, Tim Jewell (Director, Information Resources and Scholarly Communication, University of Washington Libraries), co-chair of NISO's ERM Review Working Group, discussed their effort, the current mapping project they have underway, plans for future surveying of the ERM landscape, and hopes to identify gaps where work should be undertaken in this arena.
NISO and NFAIS issue a report on the Roundtable on Best Practices for Supplemental Journal Article Materials [March 5, 2010]
On January 22, 2010 NISO and the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) cosponsored a roundtable discussion on the need for standardized bibliographic and publishing policies for supplemental material. This group met to discuss the issue of supplemental materials in journals in order to discover if there might be an opportunity to reach some consensus on how to work with supplemental materials in a more standardized fashion for improved management, access, and discoverability. The report of the meeting summarizes the discussions and provides recommendations for further action.
NISO Welcomes the American Society of Civil Engineers as its Newest Voting Member [March 3, 2010]
NISO is pleased to announce that the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) has joined NISO as a voting member. Founded in 1852, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)—located in Reston, VA—represents more than 147,000 members of the civil engineering profession worldwide. They publish 31 peer-reviewed journals as well as books, manuals, proceedings, and over 1,500 standards. In fact, ASCE is also an ANSI-accredited standards development organization and is the U.S. TAG administrator for ISO Technical Committee 98, Bases for design of structures, and Technical Committee 165, Timber Structures. In the publications arena, they have an ongoing effort to digitize their journal backfile and currently offer 25 years of electronic journals, going back to 1983. Over 180 proceedings volumes, covering conference titles from 2001 to the present, are also available in full-text electronic format. Both digital collections are available in their online Research Library where the search and browse features and viewing of tables of contents and abstracts are freely available to the public. (Full text is available to paid individual or institutional subscribers.) Their Civil Engineering Database provides access to over 100,000 bibliographic and abstracted records for all ASCE publications from 1970-present. Bruce Gossett, Managing Director, Publications, will be the ASCE primary voting representative to NISO and Charlotte McNaughton will be the alternate. For more information on ASCE, visit their website at: www.asce.org
BISG and NISO to Co-Host 4th Annual Standards Forum at ALA's Annual Conference [February 22, 2010]
Building on three years of successful co-programming, the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) will again co-host The Changing Standards Landscape on June 25, 2010 from 12:30 PM to 4:00 PM, directly prior to the American Library Association's Annual Conference in Washington, DC. This year's free, half-day program will focus on standards as they're experienced by readers and other content consumers and feature thought leadership in the critical areas of identification, discovery and format.
NISO Welcomes Cengage Learning as Its Newest Member [February 1, 2010]
NISO is pleased to announce Cengage Learning joined NISO as a Voting Member organization, effective January 2010. Headquartered in Stamford, CT, Cengage delivers learning solutions through content, applications, and services to colleges, universities, libraries, government agencies, corporations, and their instructors, students, and professionals around the world. One of their brands, Gale, is no stranger to NISO; they were a voting member for a number of years prior to their acquisition by Cengage. For more information, visit their website at www.cengage.com. The NISO primary voting representative for Cengage Learning is Kenneth Brooks, Senior Vice President, Global Production & Manufacturing Services.
UKSG and NISO Release First KBART Recommendations for Improved OpenURL Data Supply [January 18, 2010]
UKSG and NISO are pleased to announce the first report by the KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) Working Group, a joint initiative that is exploring data problems within the OpenURL supply chain. The KBART Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2010) contains practical recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers.