Revision expands use of SERU beyond e-journals
Baltimore, MD - June 4, 2012 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a new edition of the recommended practice SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding (NISO RP-7-2012). The SERU Recommended Practice offers a mechanism that can be used as an alternative to a license agreement by expressing commonly shared understandings between content providers and libraries. These understandings include such things as the definition of authorized users, expectations for privacy and confidentiality, and online performance and service provisions. The 2012 updated version of SERU recognizes both the importance of making SERU more flexible for those who want to expand its use beyond e-journals, while acknowledging the fact that consensus for other types of e-resource transactions are not as well-established as they are for e-journals.
"The 2008 version of SERU was eagerly adopted by a number of libraries and publishers to streamline the acquisition of e-journals," states Selden Lamoureux, E-Resources Librarian with SDLinforms and Co-chair of the NISO SERU Standing Committee. "Since then, with the many emerging models for acquiring e-books, both libraries and e-book providers have requested that other types of electronic resources be incorporated into the SERU framework. This new version uses language that can be applied to a wide variety of e-resources while retaining the same shared understandings that made the previous version so useful."
"SERU offers publishers and libraries the opportunity to save both the time and the costs associated with a negotiated and signed license agreement by agreeing to operate within a framework of shared understanding and good faith," explains Judy Luther, President of Informed Strategies and Co-chair of the NISO SERU Standing Committee. "SERU reflects some well-established and widely accepted common expectations concerning e-resources acquisitions. In those instances where there is as yet no standard expectation, a shared understanding may still be achieved if expectations are clearly articulated in the purchase order that accompanies SERU."
"Widespread adoption of the SERU model for electronic resource transactions offers substantial benefits to both publishers and libraries by removing the overhead of license negotiation," asserts Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. "The SERU Registry of those interested in using the SERU approach already contains over 70 publishers and content providers and185 libraries and consortia. The expansion of the recommendations to address additional types of e-resources should interest more organizations in joining the SERU registry."
The SERU Recommended Practice, the SERU Registry, and additional helpful resources are available from the SERU workroom webpage on the NISO website: www.niso.org/workrooms/seru/.
About the National Information Standards Organization (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.