April Webinar: What to Expect When You're Expecting a Platform Change: Perspectives from a Publisher and a Librarian

In recent months, information providers have released a range of modifications to many abstracting and full text journal platforms. Whether an update to its look and feel or a radical restructuring of its search, browse, and full text features, any successful change to a familiar interface requires communication, tolerance, and understanding among the affected information provider, publisher(s), and library customer.

Join NISO on April 11, 2012 from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. Eastern for the webinar What to Expect When You're Expecting a Platform Change, where a publisher and a librarian will share their own experiences with determining priorities, learning lessons, and improving practices related to changed and changing information platforms.

Topics and Speakers

• Feel the Fear and Do it Anyway: How to Manage a Platform Migration – Gillian Howcroft (Director, E-Projects, Taylor & Francis)
• Dream a Little Dream: A Librarian Envisions the Ideal Platform Migration – Kelly Smith (Interim Coordinator of Collection Services, Eastern Kentucky University Libraries)

To register and for more information, visit the event webpage.

NISO/DCMI Webinar: Schema.org and Linked Data: Complementary Approaches to Publishing Data

NISO and DCMI will hold their second of four 2012 webinars on Schema.org and Linked Data: Complementary Approaches to Publishing Data on April 25, 2012 from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. Eastern time.

Schema.org, a collaboration of the Google, Yahoo!, and Bing search engines, provides a way to include structured data in Web pages. The Schema.org initiative has emerged as a focal point for publishers of structured data in Web pages, especially but not exclusively in the commercial sector. This webinar will explore how the publication methods of Schema.org relate to the methods used to publish Linked Data.

Speakers are Dan Brickley, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, and Thomas Baker, Chief Information Officer of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative

Get a package deal; purchase three NISO/DCMI webinars, get the fourth webinar free. (The first webinar from February will be provided in a recorded version.)

To register and for more information, visit the event webpage.

May Two-Part Webinar: Understanding Critical Elements of E-books: Acquiring, Sharing, and Preserving

In May, NISO will continue its series of webinars on Understanding Critical Elements of E-books with a two-part webinar focused on the issues of Acquiring, Sharing, and Preserving E-books. Each part is independent; you can register for either one or both. Get a 25% discount if you register for both parts.

In Part 1, Can I Access the World? Involving Users in E-book Acquisition and Sharing, you will hear from two librarians and a publisher on their experiences with using patron-drive acquisitions.

Part 1 Topics and Speakers:

• Patron Driven Acquisitions: Essentials and Options – Robert Johnson, Clinical Services Librarian, University of Southern California Norris Medical Library
• Patron Driven Acquisitions: Lessons Learned and Still Learning – Beth Bernhardt, Electronic Resources Librarian and Christine Fischer, Head of Acquisitions, University of North Carolina Greensboro
• The Publisher's Experience with Patron-Driven Acquisitions – Lenny Allen, Director, Institutional Accounts, Oxford University Press

In Part 2, Heritage Lost? Ensuring the Preservation of E-books, learn how HathiTrust and Portico are working with their partners to preserve e-books and what challenges they have encountered.

Part 2 Topics and Speakers:

• HathiTrust: We're Preserving the Past, What About the Present? – Jeremy York, HathiTrust Project Librarian, University of Michigan
• Portico's E-Book Preservation Service – Sheila Morrissey, Senior Research Developer, Portico

For more information and to register, visit the event webpage.

NISO Publishes Revised Recommended Practice for RFID in U.S. Libraries

NISO's newest recommended practice is RFID in U.S. Libraries (NISO RP-6-2012), a revision of the 2008 Recommended Practice that provides a set of practices and procedures to ensure interoperability among U.S. RFID implementations in libraries.

Since the publication of the original Recommended Practice, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) published in 2011 a three-part international standard (ISO 28560) on RFID in Libraries defining the data model and the encoding of data on RFID tags for item management in libraries. The international standard offers two different encoding options and many optional data elements; RFID in U.S. Libraries (NISO-RP-6-2012) recommends a common subset of the data elements to be placed on library tags in the U.S., as well as selecting the preferred encoding and formatting of that data.

Adoption of this Recommended Practice will ensure that U.S. libraries can procure tags and equipment from different vendors, merge collections containing different manufacturers' tags, and, for the purposes of interlibrary loan, read the tags on items belonging to other libraries. Libraries that have been holding back on implementation now have the standard approach they need to protect their investments in RFID.

The Recommended Practice is available for free download from the NISO RFID Working Group's webpage.

Information Standards Quarterly Annual Review Issue Now Available

The latest issue of NISO's Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) magazine is now available in open access in PDF from the NISO website. This issue of ISQ provides the annual review of 2011 accomplishments of NISO and of the ISO TC46 committee. Also included is the annual reference listing of NISO's standards, recommended practices, and technical reports.

The standard spotlight in this issue is the new ISO thesaurus standard (ISO 25964-1). Authors Stella G. Dextre Clarke and Marcia Lei Zeng, who were the chair and U.S. representative, respectively, on the working group that developed the standard discuss in this article not only this new standard, but also the evolution and history of thesaurus standards development.

Rounding out the issue are a NISO Report on the new Web Resource Synchronization project and several noteworthy news reports on recent standards and recommended practices.

Both the entire issue and individual articles may be freely downloaded from the NISO website.

New on the NISO Website

• Physical Delivery of Library Resources – review of new recommended practice, recording of open teleconference (March 12, 2012)


• EPUB3: Putting Electronic Books into a Package – webinar slides and event Q&A


• Find That E-book—or Not: How Metadata Matters – webinar slides and event Q&A


• Report of voting for systematic review of ISO 832:1994, Information and documentation – Bibliographic description and references – Rules for the abbreviation of bibliographic terms


• Report of voting systematic review of ISO 15707:2001, Information and documentation – International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC)


• ISO Launches Online Browsing Platform


• ISO/IEC JTC1 (Information Technology Joint Technical Committee) Brochure: The force multiplier for ICT innovation

ARMA International, Call for Participation for Two New Projects

ARMA International Standards/Best Practices is recruiting volunteer participants for two new technical report publication projects: Developing Electronic File Structures and Procedures and Issues for Managing Electronic Messages as Records (a revision of TR 02-2007).To learn more and to complete an online application to join one of these project teams, visit the ARMA International Standards Development Program Projects In Progress webpage and select the project of interest. Recruitment for these two newest project teams closes April 30, 2012.

Draft Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Usage Factors

The overall aim of the Usage Factor project is to explore how online journal usage statistics might form the basis of a new measure of journal impact and quality, the Usage Factor (UF). The Draft Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Usage Factors, is one of the most significant outcomes to-date of the Usage Factor project, and is an important part of the final Stage of the project, which will take Usage Factor forward to full implementation. The draft will be available for comment on the COUNTER website until September 30, 2012. Comments should be sent to Peter Shepherd, COUNTER Director.

ISO 27729:2012, Information and documentation – International standard name identifier (ISNI)

ISO 27729 specifies the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) for the identification of public identities of parties, i.e. the identities used publicly by parties involved throughout the media content industries in the creation, production, management, and content distribution chains. The ISNI system uniquely identifies public identities across multiple fields of creative activity and provides a tool for disambiguating public identities that might otherwise be confused. For more information, visit the ISNI website.

ISO/IEC 29167-1:2012 Information technology – Automatic identification and data capture techniques – Part 1: Air interface for security services and file management for RFID architecture

ISO/IEC 29167-1 defines the architecture for security and file management for the ISO/IEC 18000 air interface standards for radio frequency identification (RFID) devices. It provides a common technical specification for security and file management for RFID devices that can be used by ISO committees developing RFID application standards. Both security and file management are defined in alignment with existing air interfaces; ISO/IEC 29167-1 only covers extensions on security and file management beyond the scope of the ISO/IEC 18000 air interfaces. ISO/IEC 29167-1 defines various security features called security mechanisms that can be implemented by a tag depending on the application. A tag can support one, a subset, or all of the specified security mechanisms.

PDA and Inter-library Loan
The Scholarly Kitchen, March 13, 2012; by Joseph Esposito

An earlier post by the author to the LibLicense list predicted that "interlibrary loan would disappear" but the author now believes that ILL will still exist but in a different way. ILL works well for print books, especially when they went out-of-print and the only way to get them was through libraries or used book sellers. While the ILL end user may consider the service free, there are significant costs in providing ILL, perhaps as much as $25-$40 per item. Libraries are totally in control of this service and publishers have no involvement and get no revenue from it. E-books change this situation completely, especially since the "first sale doctrine of copyright law" doesn't apply. Publishers want to retain control over e-book distribution even from libraries and this is why the author expects ILL to gradually go away. However, the use of patron-driven acquisition (PDA) could be a mitigating factor. In the PDA scenario, when a library patron requests an e-title that the library does not own, the patron can "request" the title, which is delivered as a PDA "rental," usually immediately, to the patron. The library is charged the "rental" fee, often less than the former cost of print ILL, and, unlike the old ILL, the publisher receives some payment. This scenario ought to attract publishers, even though some still believe PDA cuts into book sales. In actuality, many books will only be discovered through a library's participation in a PDA program. This e-book PDA model "represent[s] significant changes to the supply chain for books," both for publishers and libraries. (Link to Web Source)

The Library Cloud Pros and Cons
The Digital Shift, March 5, 2012; by Edward M. Corrado and Heather Lea Moulaison

Cloud computing for libraries means hosting the library's information outside of the library's institution, with patron access through the Internet. Marshall Breeding (Vanderbilt University) predicted in a Computers in Libraries article (September 2011) that cloud-based platforms would replace the existing integrated library system (ILS). While this offers some benefits, it also has some drawbacks. Cloud pros include: greater system efficiency; flexibility in balancing and scaling resource usage; potential for services that provide new uses for existing data, e.g., the Ex Libris bX recommender service; reduced need for IT expertise and staff; less expensive options for general applications such as e-mail through Google mail; and less downtime related to maintenance and upgrade activities. Cons for cloud computing are: possibility of higher, rather than lower cost; little or no control over when downtime for maintenance may occur; requirement for a reliable and high-speed Internet connection; privacy and security issues that while solvable must be evaluated and understood; and ownership rights to the data. Libraries that use cloud services should have a Service Level Agreement (SLA) in place that addresses how these issues will be handled. The University of Washington Health Services Library implemented a cloud-based web-conferencing application only to see it sold to another company and then discontinued. Wake Forest University moved their ILS to the cloud along with its website and discovery layer. They found that it "had similar costs but offered operational benefits." [Article includes sidebar "What's in the Cloud?"] (Link to Web Source)

What is Linked Open Data?
Europeana Press Release, February 16, 2012

To support the use of linked data in the information community, Europeana has published data for 2.4 million objects under a Creative Commons CC0 license. To further aid in understanding linked data, an animation was developed to explain what linked data is and why it's good for both users and data providers. Europeana's business strategy is based on the making their data openly available so it can be used "to develop innovative applications for smartphones and tablets and to create new web services and portals." National libraries in Europe are also supporting and publishing linked open data. See the recently launched Bibliothèque Nationale de France linked data site. The Library Linked Data Incubator Group of the W3C is co-chaired by Europeana's Anotine Isaac. An open data agreement is included the contract that organizations sign when they provide metadata to Europeana. The agreement goes into effect on July 1, 2012 making everything in their system Open Data. [Included in the release are links to various open data websites and a list of the institutions that provide CC0 metadata to Europeana.] (Link to Web Source)

The Ins and Outs of Evaluating Web-Scale Discovery Services
Computers in Libraries, 32(3), April 2012; by Athena Hoeppner

Libraries are increasingly replacing federated search systems with a single index search and single ranked results list culled from a wide diversity of resources. Such web-scale discovery services (WSD) is what the author investigated to implement at the University of Central Florida. Key concepts in WSD include: a single central processed index of the harvested metadata and the discovery layer comprising the search technology and the user interface. Some vendors offer both the index and discovery layer components, but often the two components can come from different vendors and be combined. The four major vendors/products reviewed were: EBSCO's Discovery Service, Ex Libris's Primo Central Index, Serials Solutions' Summon, and OCLC's WorldCat Local. A central index typically contains some or all of: library cataloging data (e.g. MARC records); citation metadata and full text from open access publications or databases; publisher metadata and full-text licensed materials (licensed by the WSD vendor, the library, or both). What metadata from which resources is in which WSD central index varies greatly from one vendor or service to another and one library to another depending on different license agreements. Different vendors may also include different subsets of metadata from the same original resource. Features of the discovery layer, that vary somewhat from one vendor to another, are: the ability to brand the interface with the library's information; standard basic search features such as keywords, truncation, phrase, and Boolean; advanced searching such as limiters and facets; Web 2.0 features such as tagging and integration with social media sites; enhancement of results. Some considerations for choosing a vendor would include existing vendor relationships and pricing. Since each WDS solution is customized for the library, viewing another implementation may not show the availability of all features. [Article includes a list and links to example library WSD implementations.] (Link to Web Source)

Other Stories of Interest

The following are some additional stories that have appeared in the last month that we can't cover in detail, but which may be of interest to Newsline readers.

• Construction Zones on the Library Road to the Future. Public Library Quarterly, 31(1): 21-47, 2012; by Carl Grant


• Google Begins to Scale Back Its Scanning of Books From University Libraries. The Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2012; by Jennifer Howard


• E-journal Preservation and Archiving: Whether, How, Who, Which, Where, and When? The Scholarly Kitchen, March 7, 2012; by Rick Anderson


• Expanding Options for Ebooks. Information Today NewsBreaks, April 2, 2012; by Paula J. Hane


• The ISO 25964 Data Model for the Structure of an Information Retrieval Thesaurus. Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science & Technology, 38(4), April/May 2012; by Leonard Will


• Librarians Reach Out to Publishers at AAP Conference. The Digital Shift, March 14, 2012; by Meredith Schwartz


• An Open Letter to Academic Publishers About Open Access. The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 1, 2012; by Jennifer Howard


• Publishing: The Revolution. The New York Review of Books, March 11, 2012; by Jason Epstein