NISO Publishes White Paper on the Future Standardization Needs for Electronic Resource Management Systems
Baltimore, MD, February 1, 2012 -- The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of Making Good on the Promise of ERM: A Standards and Best Practices Discussion Paper. This publication is the outcome of the NISO Electronic Resource Management (ERM) Data Standards and Best Practices Project, a successor to the Digital Library Federation's Electronic Resources Management Initiative (ERMI). The project's primary goals were to perform a "gap analysis" of standards and best practices and make recommendations on the future of the ERMI Data Dictionary. More>>>

NISO and NFAIS Issue Draft for Public Comment of Recommended Practice on Supplemental Materials for Journal Articles
Baltimore, MD & Philadelphia, PA, January 31, 2012 -- The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the National Federation for Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) have issued a new Recommended Practice on Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials, Part A: Business Policies and Practices (NISO RP-15-201x) for public comment ending on February 29, 2012. Although supplemental materials are increasingly being added to journal articles, there is no recognized set of practices to guide in the selection, delivery, discovery, or preservation of these materials. To address this gap, NISO and NFAIS jointly sponsored a working group to establish best practices that would provide guidance to publishers and authors for management of supplemental materials and would solve related problems for librarians, abstracting and indexing services, and repository administrators. The Supplemental Materials project has two groups working in tandem: one to address business practices and one to focus on technical issues. The draft currently available for comment includes the recommendations from the Business Working Group. More>>>

NISO Publishes New Recommended Practice on Physical Delivery of Library Resources
Identifies Methods for Reducing Resource Sharing Delivery Time and Costs
Baltimore, MD, January 19, 2012 -- The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of the new recommended practice: Physical Delivery of Library Resources (NISO RP-12-2012). The physical delivery of library materials is an integral component of the library resource sharing process. Despite the ever-increasing availability of electronic journals, e-books, and other digital resources, the movement of physical items remains a major concern and a major cost for many libraries. In one state, borrowing of returnable items increased by 107.4% in six years. A recent study showed that the average academic library spends more than $6,800/year for delivery services, with some libraries paying as high as $60,000. Given such volumes, libraries are struggling to deal with the labor and equipment costs, material wear and tear, and transit and sorting needs. More>>>

NISO Releases Updated Draft of SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding for Public Comment
Revised version broadens use beyond e-journals
Baltimore, MD, January 5, 2012 -- The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of a draft update of SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding for public comment (NISO RP-7-201X) through February 19, 2012. SERU offers publishers and libraries the opportunity to save both the time and the costs associated with a negotiated and signed license agreement for e-resources by both content provider and customer agreeing to operate within a framework of shared understanding and good faith. The SERU framework provides a set of common understandings for parties to reference as an alternative to a formal license when conducting business. More>>>

NISO and Open Archives Initiative Receive Grant from Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to Create Resource Synchronization Standard
New Standard Will Improve Availability and Timeliness of Repository Content
Baltimore, MD, December 14, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Open Archives Initiative have been awarded a $222,000 grant for a joint project to develop a new open standard on the real-time synchronization of Web resources. Increasingly, large-scale digital collections are available from multiple hosting locations, are cached at multiple servers, and leveraged by several services. This proliferation of replicated copies of works or data on the Internet has created an increasingly challenging problem of keeping the repositories' holdings and the services that leverage them up-to-date and accurate. As we move from a Web of documents to a Web of data, synchronization becomes even more important: decisions made based on unsynchronized or incoherent scientific or economic data can have serious deleterious impact. More>>>

NISO Endorses BISG Policy on the Use of ISBNs for E-books
Baltimore, MD, December 8, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to support and endorse the Book Industry Study Group’s new policy statement, Best Practices for Identifying Digital Products. This publication will help to clarify the increasingly complex problems associated with the identification of electronic books in the supply chain. More>>>

NISO Issues COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile for Public Comment
Provides a Baseline Implementation Structure for SUSHI Harvesting of Release 4 COUNTER Reports
Baltimore, MD, December 7, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of NISO SUSHI Protocol: COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-201X) for a public comment period ending on January 20, 2012. This Recommended Practice provides a practical implementation structure to be used in the creation of reports and services related to harvesting of COUNTER Release 4 reports using the NISO SUSHI Protocol. The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting (SUSHI) Protocol was issued as a standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93) in 2007 to simplify and automate the harvesting of COUNTER usage reports by libraries from the growing number of information providers they work with. COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) is an international initiative that published their first Code of Practice in 2003 and issued Draft Release 4 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for e-Resources in October 2011. The comment period for the COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile and COUNTER Release 4 end on the same date. XML schemas supporting the draft Implementation Profile and draft Release 4 of the Counter Code of Practice have also been published by NISO for review during the comment period. More>>>

NISO Publishes Recommended Practice on Single Sign-on Authentication
Identifies Needed Improvements for Users Authenticating to Licensed Electronic Resources
Baltimore, MD, November 7, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a new Recommended Practice, ESPReSSO: Establishing Suggested Practices Regarding Single Sign-On (NISO RP-11-2011), that identifies practical solutions for improving the use of single sign-on authentication technologies to ensure a seamless experience for the user. This recommended practice is the result of the NISO Chair's Initiative-a project of the chair of NISO's Board of Directors, focusing on a specific issue that would benefit from study and the development of a recommended practice or standard. Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist for E-Resource Access and Management Services at EBSCO Information Services and the 2008-2009 Chair of NISO's Board of Directors, chose the issue of standardizing seamless, item-level linking through single sign-on (SSO) authentication technologies in a networked information environment, which resulted in the formation of the ESPReSSO Working Group. More>>>

Latest Issue of NISO's Information Standards Quarterly Magazine Focuses on Organization and People Identifiers
Contributing authors offer a wide variety of perspectives across the library and publishing community
Baltimore, MD, September 22, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of the Summer 2011 issue of the Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) magazine with a special issue theme of Organization and People Identifiers. ISQ Guest Content Editor, Helen Henderson, Managing Director at Information Power Ltd. has assembled an expert group of authors to discuss the major standards and initiatives. As she states in her introductory letter: "Identifiers have always been essential standards in libraries and publishing. Content identifiers, such as the ISBN, are well established, but institutional and personal identifiers are much newer, the need having emerged as more and more content is available electronically." More>>>

NISO Recommended Practice on Test Modes for SUSHI Servers Issued for Trial Use
Guidelines Will Aid in Faster Development of SUSHI Clients to Harvest Usage Statistics
Baltimore, MD, August 1, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of the recommended practice Providing a Test Mode for SUSHI Servers (NISO RP-13-201x) for a trial use period ending January 31, 2012. The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol is a NISO standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2007) that automates the retrieval of COUNTER usage statistics by libraries. The process of developing a SUSHI client requires testing against the SUSHI servers where usage data is expected to be harvested. The new Recommended Practice describes how content providers should provide access to their SUSHI Servers in a test mode so that clients can be set up easier and faster, which is of benefit to both libraries and content providers. More>>>

NISO Recommended Practice on Physical Delivery of Library Resources Available for Public Comment
Identifies Methods for Reducing Resource Sharing Delivery Time and Costs
Baltimore, MD, July 8, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of Physical Delivery of Library Resources (NISO RP-12-201x) for a public comment period ending on August 21, 2011. The physical delivery of library materials is an integral component of the library resource sharing process. Despite the ever-increasing availability of electronic journals, e-books, and other digital resources, the movement of physical items remains a major concern and a major cost for many libraries. In one state, borrowing of returnable items increased by 107.4% in six years. A recent study showed that the average academic library spends more than $6,800/year for delivery services, with some libraries paying as high as $60,000. More>>>

NISO Publishes Special E-book Issue of Information Standards Quarterly
Contributing authors offer a wide variety of perspectives across the library and publishing community
Baltimore, MD, July 7, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of the Spring 2011 issue of the Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) magazine with a special issue theme of Views of the E-book Renaissance. ISQ Guest Content Editor, October Ivins of Ivins eContent Solutions has pulled together a broad range of perspectives on what is happening today with e-books and particularly with e-book standards. As she states in her introductory letter: "Our goal for this issue of ISQ is to present an overview of the status of e-books from multiple perspectives-publishers and other content producers, librarians, and the many vendors who support their creation, management, sales, and distribution. Not coincidentally, it also illustrates the scope of the NISO community." More>>>

NISO Receives Mellon Foundation Grant to Support Standards Development Pre-work with the Internet Archive for E-Book Annotation Sharing
Workshops will be held in Frankfurt and San Francisco to define requirements
Baltimore, MD, July 6, 2011 −The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has been awarded a $48,500 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund two standards incubation workshops, which it will lead with the Internet Archive, on the topic of E-Book Annotation Sharing and Social Reading. These meetings will be held in conjunction with the Frankfurt Book Fair in Frankfurt, Germany, on October 10, 2011, and the Books In Browsers Meeting in San Francisco, on October 26, 2011. The Mellon Foundation grant will pay for the planning, organization, and direct meeting expenses for the two workshops, for which NISO will conduct the majority of the planning, organization and logistical support. More>>>

NISO Elects New Vice Chair and Directors to Serve Community
Baltimore, MD, June 22, 2011 - The membership of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has elected new leadership for the 2011-2012 term that begins on July 1, 2011. Bruce Heterick, Vice President, Outreach & Participation Services for Portico and JSTOR, who was elected last year and has served as Vice Chair during the current term, will become Chair of NISO for the 2011-12 term. Barbara Preece has been elected to serve as Vice Chair of the NISO Board of Directors. She will transition into the chairmanship in the 2012-13 term. Preece is Dean of the Library, California State University, San Marcos. She has been active in library and library consortium management for many years, and has written extensively in the area of patron initiated interlibrary loan and document delivery. She currently serves as a member of NISO’s Board of Directors. More>>>

UKSG and NISO Announce Eight More Publishers Endorse KBART
Support and Demand for KBART Increasing Within Knowledge Community
Baltimore, MD, June 13, 2011 - UKSG and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) are pleased to announce that another eight publishers are now able to supply metadata that conforms to the recommended practice, KBART: Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (NISO RP-9-2010). Endorsement of this publication, which contains practical recommendations for the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers, indicates that the format and content of data supplied by the publisher to knowledge bases and related tools conform to the KBART recommendations. More>>>

NISO Recommended Practice on Single Sign-On Authentication Available for Public Comment
Identifies Needed Improvements for Users Authenticating to Licensed Electronic Resources
Baltimore, MD, May 24, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of ESPReSSO: Establishing Suggested Practices Regarding Single Sign-On (NISO RP-11-201x) for a thirty day public comment period ending on June 22, 2011. ESPReSSO identifies practical solutions for improving the use of single sign-on authentication technologies to ensure a seamless experience for the user. More>>>

NISO Revised Recommended Practice for RFID in U.S. Libraries Available for Public Comment
Implementation of recommendations will ensure interoperability of RFID tags for libraries
Baltimore, MD, May 12, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization announces the availability of RFID in U.S. Libraries (NISO RP-6-201x) for a thirty day public comment period, beginning immediately and ending on June 9, 2011. This revision of the 2008 Recommended Practice recommends a set of practices and procedures to ensure interoperability among U.S. RFID implementations in libraries. By following these recommendations, libraries can ensure that an RFID tag in one library can be used seamlessly by another, even if they have different suppliers for tags, hardware, and software. More>>>

NISO Launches E-book Special Interest Group
New group will foster collaborative work, incubate new initiatives, and provide education
Baltimore, MD, May 4, 2011 – The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and its Architecture Committee are pleased to announce the creation of a Special Interest Group focused on E-books (the NISO E-book SIG). Simultaneous with the formation of the group, NISO is issuing a call for participation in the E-book SIG and its associated monitoring group. The E-book SIG will explore a range of industry best practices and standards related to the creation, distribution, discovery, delivery, and preservation of digital book content. The primary responsibilities of the group will be to continuously monitor and review the state of the industry for e-books and to suggest areas for new initiatives within NISO or areas where NISO can engage with other communities on e-book work underway outside of NISO. The group will also host thought leader meetings and commission relevant research to advance the state of the industry. More>>>

NISO Announces Appointment of Nettie Lagace to Lead Education and Standards Development Initiatives
Baltimore, MD, May 3, 2011 – The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to announce the appointment of Nettie Lagace as Associate Director for Programs. Nettie will be responsible for directing NISO's educational and standards development initiatives. In addition to participation in NISO's strategic orientation, Nettie will contribute to the expansion of NISO's membership and portfolio of projects. "We are extremely pleased Nettie is joining the team at NISO," said Todd Carpenter, NISO's Managing Director. "She brings a deep understanding of the library and information exchange community and a commitment to building efficiencies in content distribution. Her tremendous experience not only in standards development, but NISO's processes in particular, will be a significant asset to the organization." More>>>

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