NISO Publishes Annual Year in Review Issue of Information Standards Quarterly

Baltimore, MD - April 8, 2013 - The Spring 2013 issue of the National Information Standard Organization's Information Standards Quarterly magazine—providing a summary of the 2012 standards development work conducted by NISO and by the international ISO Information and Documentation committee (TC46)—has been published in open access on the NISO website. NISO provides this Year in Review issue on an annual basis to keep readers apprised of all the accomplishments of our community in the past year.
"NISO has a very active standards and recommended practices development pipeline with more than 20 active projects," explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for Programs. "In 2012, we published two new standards, the revision of a two-part standard, two new recommended practices, two recommended practice revisions, and a new white paper. We also launched three new initiatives and were awarded two new grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These are all described in more detail in this issue of ISQ."

"NISO's role as the U.S. Administrator for the ISO TC46 Committee on Information and Documentation and the Secretariat for the subcommittee on Identification and Description ensures that our community has an active role in international standards development as well," said Cynthia Hodgson, ISQ Managing Editor and a consultant for NISO who helps manage the ISO work. "Our members not only vote on these ISO standards ballots, they also provide critical comments to the development working groups and volunteer to be members of these groups to help shape these international standards. This issue summarizes the work of TC 46 and its four subcommittees during 2012."

"Standards and recommended practice development is only possible through the dedicated efforts of knowledgeable volunteers throughout the community," states Todd Carpenter, NISO's Executive Director. "Nothing NISO accomplishes could have happened without the tremendous efforts and support of our community of volunteers. The successes of the past year are a perfect example of that and as an organization we have much to be proud of, which is clearly illustrated in this issue."

The Spring issue also contains a standard spotlight article on the Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS), a new standard based on an older specification, originally developed at the National Library of Medicine. Also included in the issue is the annual reference listing of all of NISO's published standards, recommended practices, and technical reports.

The Spring issue of Information Standards Quarterly is available electronically in open access from the NISO website at: www.niso.org/publications/isq/. ISQ is also available in print format by subscription or in print on demand.

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.

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