NISO Announces CORE Initiative

Proposed Standard to Form Information Bridge Between ILS and ERMS

Baltimore, MD -- The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has approved work on a new standard project, CORE (Cost Of Resource Exchange), to facilitate the exchange of cost, fund, vendor, and invoice information between Integrated Library Systems (ILS), Business Systems, Electronic Resource Management Systems (ERMS)and other interested parties such as Subscription Agents. People interested in joining the Cost of Resource Exchange (CORE) Working Group or affiliated interest group are asked to contact NISO. The target date for completion of the draft standard is December 1, 2008.
The new work item was first proposed by Jeff Aipperspach, Product Manager, Serials Solutions , Ted Koppel, AGent Verso (ILS) Product Manager, Auto-Graphics, Inc., and. Ed Riding, Technical Product Manager, SirsiDynix. In describing the project, Riding said, "We have three main goals. First, we want to develop and refine the list of data elements exchanged between an ERMS, ILS, Business Systems and other interested parties holding acquisitions metadata to support the population of the ERMS with financial and vendor information in the automated system. Second, we intend to create a transport protocol useful in moving these data elements from one system to another. Third, we will write a small number of use cases which will help all parties understand the capabilities of the protocol."

"With real-time lookups and cost-per-click and other cost-related reports in the ERMS, users will be able to avoid manually entering the same data in two different systems," said Patricia Brennan, Manager, Evaluative Products, Thomson Reuters, and Chair of the NISO Business Information Topic Committee that oversees the new Working Group. "Using defined XML data schemas, the standard will provide a common method of requesting cost-related information from an ILS for a specific electronic resource. Once implemented, this standard could well be expanded to include other elements."

Todd Carpenter, Managing Director or NISO, added: "We expect great interest from librarians who have implemented an ERMS, ERMS creators, and ILS creators and hope that they will comment on the process every step of the way toward a final standard."

The Working Group expects to complete the XML schema by Nov. 1, 2008 and have an approved American National Standard by Spring 2009. People interested in this project should contact Karen A. Wetzel, NISO Standards Program Manager, at kwetzel@niso.org. An initial group roster is expected by July 11, 2008.

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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