NISO Voting Members Elect New Vice Chair and Directors to Lead the Organization in 2012-2013

The membership of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has elected new leadership for the 2012-2013 term that begins on July 1, 2012. Barbara Preece, Dean of the Library California State University, San Marcos, who previously served as Vice Chair, will become Chair of NISO for the 2012-13 term. Heather Reid, Director of Data Systems at the Copyright Clearance Center (CCC) and a NISO Board Director at the time of the election, has been elected to serve as Vice Chair of the NISO Board of Directors and will transition into the chairmanship in the 2013-14 term.

Elected as Directors for the Board are: Janice L. Fleming, Director of Business and Planning for PsycINFO, American Psychological Association; Mairead Martin, Senior Director of Digital Library Technologies, Pennsylvania State University; Patricia A. Steele, Dean, University of Maryland Libraries; Tyler Walters, Dean, University Libraries, Virginia Tech; and Keith Webster, VP and Director, Academic Relations and Strategy , John Wiley and Sons.

Bruce Heterick, Vice President, Outreach & Participation Services, JSTOR and Portico, who is currently serving as NISO's Chair, will serve the next term in the role as Past Chair. Bruce Rosenblum, CEO of Inera Incorporated, will continue to serve as NISO's Treasurer, a position he has held since 2011. Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director also serves Ex Officio on the Board as Secretary.

The full press release is available on the NISO website.

NISO Launches Two New Initiatives: Standardization of SIP and Recommended Practices for DDA of Monographs

NISO voting members have approved two new initiatives for the organization. The first project is to formalize the 3M Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) as an American National Standard. Introduced in 1993, the SIP protocol provides a mechanism for Integrated Library Systems (ILS) applications and self-service devices to communicate seamlessly to perform self-service transactions. This protocol quickly became a de facto standard around the world, and remains the primary protocol to integrate ILS and self-service devices. Since the protocol's inception, 3M has continued to produce updated versions of it-most recently version 3.0 in late 2011. A NISO Working Group will now shepherd SIP 3.0 through the standardization process of becoming an American National Standard. There is close connection between SIP and NISO's Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) standard. With both standards approved and maintained within NISO, there is an opportunity for the two standards' working groups to clarify the structural differences and to provide the community direction on the appropriateness for each standard within a given context. This will be one of the tasks of both the new working group and the NCIP Maintenance Agency moving forward. View the SIP project proposal for more information.

The second project is to develop recommended practices for the Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs. Many libraries have embraced DDA (also referred to as patron-driven acquisition) to present many more titles to their patrons for potential use and purchase than would ever be feasible under the traditional purchase model. If implemented correctly, DDA can make it possible to purchase only what is needed, allowing libraries to spend the same amount of money as they previously spent on monographs, but with a higher rate of use. However, this model requires libraries to develop and implement new procedures for adding titles to a "consideration pool", for keeping unowned titles available for purchase for some future period, often years after publication, for providing discovery methods of titles in the pool, establishing rules on when a title gets purchased or only temporarily leased, and how potential titles are discovered, and for handling of multiple formats of a title. The new NISO initiative will develop recommendations to address these issues, hopefully with a single set of practices that will cover both electronic and print formats. The project proposal is available for download from the NISO website.

Working group formation for both initiatives is underway. Interested participants should contact Nettie Lagace. For those interested in following the projects, e-mail interest group lists have been established. For information on how to join either list, visit the NISO Public E-mail Lists webpage.

NISO August Webinar: Content on the Go: Mobile Access to E-Resources

The wide availability of ever-improving mobile hardware, software, and connectivity continue to affect the experience of information seekers, and to place new demands and opportunities on libraries and information providers. How can libraries and publishers provide effective new interfaces for collections to help a user base continually on the move?

Join NISO on August 8, 2012 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. (EDT) for the webinar Content on the Go: Mobile Access to E-Resources where speakers will explore many of the pressing questions about libraries' interaction with and promotion of mobile technologies.

Topics and speakers are:

• Challenges to Consider: Developing Mobile Access to Digital Collections – Carmen Mitchell, Institutional Repository Librarian, California State University San Marcos


• E-books On the Go: How a University Library Experimented with E-book Readers – Eleanor Cook, Assistant Director for Collections & Technical Services, East Carolina University


• Publisher E-content Platforms Go Mobile – Susan Dunavan, Manager of Solution Architecture, Atypon Systems

Registration is per site (access for one computer). Discounts are available for NISO and NASIG members and students. Can't make it on the webinar date/time? Register now and gain access to the recorded archive for one year.

Visit the event webpage to register and for more information.

NISO/DCMI August Webinar: Metadata for Managing Scientific Research Data

NISO and the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) will be holding the third of their joint webinars on August 22, 2012 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. EDT on the topic of Metadata for Managing Scientific Research Data.

The past few years have seen increased attention to national and international policies for data archiving and sharing. Chief motivators include the proliferation of digital data and a growing interest in research data and supplemental information as part of the framework for scholarly communication. Key objectives include not only preservation of scientific research data, but also making data accessible to verify research findings and support the reuse and repurposing of data.

Metadata figures prominently in these undertakings, and is critical for the success of any data repositories or archiving initiative, hence the increased attention to metadata for scientific data—specifically for metadata standards development and interoperability, data curation and metadata generation processes, data identifiers, name authority control (for scientists), linked data, ontology and vocabulary work, and data citation standards.

This joint NISO/DCMI webinar will provide an historical perspective and an overview of current metadata practices for managing scientific data, with examples drawn from operational repositories and community-driven data science initiatives. It will discuss challenges and potential solutions for metadata generation, identifiers, name authority control, linked data, and data citation.

Speakers are:

• Jane Greenberg, professor at the School of Information and Library Science (SILS) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and director of the SILS Metadata Research Center, is well known for research and writing on topics ranging from automatic metadata creation to metadata best practices, ontology research, Semantic Web, data repositories, thesauri, and scientific data curation.


• Thomas Baker, Chief Information Officer of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, has recently co-chaired the W3C Semantic Web Deployment Working Group and the W3C Incubator Group on Library Linked Data.

Registration is per site (access for one computer). Discounts are available for NISO and DCMI members and for students. Can't make it on the live webinar date/time? Registrants get access to the recorded version for one year. For more information and to register, visit the event webpage.

NISO Forum: Tracking It Back to the Source: Managing and Citing Research Data

As data creation increases exponentially across nearly all scholarly disciplines, new roles and requirements are rising to meet the challenges in organization, identification, description, publication, discovery, citation, preservation, and curation to allow these materials to realize their potential in support of data-driven, often interdisciplinary research. Join NISO on September 24 in Denver for the in-person forum Tracking it Back to the Source: Managing and Citing Research Data and learn about several new initiatives to improve community practice on data citation and data discovery.

Speakers and topics include:

• Opening Keynote – Allen Renear, Professor and Interim Dean, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign


• DataCite and EZID – Joan Starr, Manager, Strategic and Project Planning and EZID Service Manager, California Digital Library and Jim Mullins, Dean of Libraries, Purdue University


• Data Equivalence – Mark Parsons, Lead Project Manager, Senior Associate Scientist, National Snow and Ice Data Center


• ResourceSync: the Large-Scale Synchronization of Web Resources – Herbert Van de Sompel, Digital Library Researcher, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and Co-chair of NISO's ResourceSync Working Group


• Data Observation Network for Earth (DataONE) – William (Bill) Michener, Professor and Director of e-Science Initiatives for University Libraries, University of New Mexico; DataONE Principal Investigator


• Data Attribution and Citation Practices – Micah Altman, Director of Research and Head/Scientist, Program on Information Science for the MIT Libraries, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The agenda, registration, and hotel information are available on the event webpage. Get the early bird discount by registering by September 10, 2012. NISO members and students receive a discounted rate.

NISO Forum: The E-Book Renaissance, Part II: Challenges and Opportunities

NISO will be following up on last year's acclaimed forum on The E-book Renaissance with Part II on Challenges and Opportunities, a two-day forum in Boston, MA on October 18-19, 2012.

E-books have existed in the library landscape for over a decade, but it is only in the last few years that their use has shifted to finally become the game-changer that all have anticipated for so long. Availability, distribution, licensing, discoverability, current and future access, and usage of e-books all require content providers and libraries to change many of their existing processes and develop new ways to do business. Amidst this confusion is a wealth of opportunities for new collaborations and initiatives.

The NISO Forum, The E-Book Renaissance, Part II: Challenges and Opportunities will probe the key issues surrounding e-books from a variety of industry, library, scholarly, and consumer viewpoints. Participate in the community discussion for advancing e-book development, distribution, and use.

Topic and speakers include:

• Keynote Presentation – Nick Montfort, Associate Professor of Digital Media, Massachusetts Institute of Technology


• Panel discussion: Primary and Trade Publishers' E-book Initiatives – Moderator: Brian O'Leary, Magellan Media Consultant Partners


• Library Perspectives
• Licensing, Access, and Related Issues – Chuck Hamaker, Associate University Librarian for Collection Development & Electronic Resources, University of North Carolina Charlotte


• Landscape Discussion – Suzanne M. Ward, Head, Collection Management, Professor of Library Science, Purdue University Libraries


• What we Are Doing at My Library – Lynn Wiley, Head of Acquisitions, University of Illinois


• NISO E-book Special Interest Group: New Initiative on Demand Driven Acquisitions


• Books in Browser: End User Tools – Speaker TBA


• Panel discussion: Aggregators and Platform Providers – Moderator: Sue Polanka, Head of Reference & Instruction, Wright State University Libraries


• Accessibility in E-books – Speaker TBA


• Surveys: Patron Profiles – Ian Singer, Library Journal


• Devices: E-book Hardware – Speaker TBA


• Rights, Digital Management, and Piracy – Skott Klebe, Copyright Clearance Center


• Digital Public Library of American (DPLA) – Speaker TBA

An early bird registration discount is available through October 5, 2012. Additional discounts are available to NISO members and students. Visit the event webpage for more information and to register.

PIE-J Draft Recommended Practice Comment Deadline Extended

The deadline for comments on the draft recommended practice PIE-J: Presentation & Identification of E-Journals (NISO RP-16-201x) has been extended to July 18, 2012 to accommodate requests from some reviewers who needed extra time.

This Recommended Practice was developed to provide guidance on the presentation of e-journals-particularly in the areas of title presentation, accurate use of ISSN, and citation practices-to publishers and platform providers, as well as to solve some long-standing concerns of serials librarians.

The PIE-J draft Recommended Practice and an online commenting form are available from the NISO PIE-J workroom webpage.

New on the NISO Website

• Making Better Decisions with Usage Statistics (NISO webinar) presentation slides
• Recap of ISO TC46 Meeting in Berlin May 7-11, 2012 Open Teleconference Recording
• NISO/BISG Forum The Changing Standards Landscape for E-Books presentation slides
• NISO Standards Update at ALA presentation slides
• Preliminary voting results for systematic review ISO/TR 21449, Content Delivery and Rights Management – Functional requirements for identifiers and descriptors for use in the music, film, video, sound recording and publishing industries
• SUSHI Server Registry – updates for BioOne
• NISO Begins Process of National Standardization of the 3M Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) [press release]
• NISO Launches New Initiative to Develop Recommended Practices for Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs [press release]
• NISO Voting Members Elect New Vice Chair and Directors to Lead the Organization in 2012-2013 [press release]
• NISO's IOTA Initiative: Completeness Index and Improving Element Weights slides from presentation by Oliver Pesch at ALA Annual 2012
• ResourceSync: Web-based Resource Synchronization slides from presentation by Simeon Warner at Open Repositories 2012

Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, DCMI Metadata Terms Published with RDFa Markup

A maintenance release of DCMI Metadata Terms now includes HTML markup describing all of its properties, classes, datatypes, and vocabulary encoding schemes in machine-readable RDF in accordance with the new W3C RDFa Lite 1.1 specification. A Web page with RDFa provides—in the same source document—both the human-readable text rendered on-screen by browsers and the detailed machine-readable representation needed by Semantic Web applications. All of the software and data used to generate this documentation is available from an open-source repository on GitHub.

ISO 13008:2012, Information and documentation – Digital records conversion and migration process

Provides guidance for the conversion of records from one format to another and the migration of records from one hardware or software configuration to another. It contains applicable records management requirements, the organizational and business framework for conducting the conversion and migration process, technology planning issues, and monitoring/controls for the process. This standard was derived from ANSI/ARMA 16-2007, The Digital Records Conversion Process: Program Planning, Requirements, Procedures.

ISO 14289-1:2012, Document management applications – Electronic document file format enhancement for accessibility – Part 1: Use of ISO 32000-1 (PDF/UA-1)

Specifies how to use the Portable Document Format (PDF) ISO 32000-1:2008 to produce electronic documents that are accessible to users with disabilities. The accessibility of a document is dependent on the inclusion of a variety of semantic information in a document such as (but not limited to) machine-recoverable text presented in a declared language, logical structure of content, and organization of that content in pages, sections, and paragraphs.

ISO/IEC 29160:2012, Information technology – Radio frequency identification for item management – RFID Emblem

Specifies the design and use of the RFID Emblem: an easily identified visual guide that indicates the presence of radio frequency identification (RFID). It does not address location of the RFID Emblem on a label. Specific placement requirements are left to application standards developers. It also specifies an RFID Index, a two-character code that provides specific information about compliant tags and interrogators. Successful reading of RFID tags requires knowledge of the frequency, protocol, and data structure information provided by the RFID Index.

W3C Working Draft, PROV-AQ: Provenance Access and Query

This document specifies how to use standard Web protocols, including HTTP, to obtain information about the provenance of resources on the Web. We describe both simple access mechanisms for locating provenance information associated with web pages or resources, and provenance query services for more complex deployments. This is the second public working draft. The changes focus on revising the provenance-service specification to provide better guidance to developers as well as introducing better naming conventions for the use of link headers in locating provenance. This is part of the larger W3C Prov provenance framework.

Data Citation Initiatives and Issues
Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, June/July 2012; by Matthew S. Mayernik

Although many researchers still provide textual references to their supporting data, formal citation to an accessible data set is becoming more common and expected. Many initiatives in various disciplines are underway to formalize how data is cited. CODATA and the International Council for Scientific and Technical Information created a task group on data citation standard, which held a workshop in August 2011 and is preparing a recommendations report. The NSF Directorate for Geosciences also held a workshop in 2011 with a follow-up report that included recommendations for data citation. DataCite has a rapidly growing database of registered DOIs for datasets. Additional data citation guidelines were issue in 2011 by the Federation for Earth Science Information Partners (U.S.) and the Digital Curation Centre (U.K.). The underlying goal for these projects is to promote the accessibility and re-use of data; but while many research communities support that goal, they are less supportive of using a standard data citation. Interest in citations has grown due to the development of institutional repositories, existence of identifiers such as DOI that can be used for datasets, and web-based linking technology. Both libraries and publishers have a lot of expertise with digital collections including identifiers and linking and can contribute their expertise to data management. To effectively cite a dataset, a curation program to ensure the archiving of that data must be in place. The American Geophysical Union, for example, requires authors to only cite data sets if they are in stable archives. Unfortunately, such archives are not yet in use for the bulk of research data. Datasets also can be difficult to define and label, as they can be a compilation of a number of different objects and have collaborative authorship. Data citation is not part of the current culture of research documentation; researchers need to be trained about when and how to cite data. Tools need to be in place that will provide pre-formatted citations that can be imported into citation management software. While much work remains to be done, a robust data citation infrastructure is critical to bringing visibility, accessibility, and usability of research data.
(Link to Web Source)

The Problem of Discovery for Patron-driven Acquisitions (PDA)
The Scholarly Kitchen, Jun 12, 2012; by Joseph Esposito

Book marketing by publishers is traditionally done just before and after publication with promotional mailings and social media notices, publicity to media, review copies, etc. As time goes on, marketing for the title slows with some possible new promotions for such items as a paperback or movie version. With patron-driven acquisition, however, purchases of titles can occur over a much longer timeframe following publication and publishers need to adapt to this new marketing challenge of how to interest library patrons to request titles throughout this extended time. Finding a cost-effective method for such marketing can be difficult, especially when most marketing funds will be earmarked for new publications. To start with, available titles have to be included in a PDA collection, well described, and easily discovered. "Practical book discover for PDA, in other words, is largely a matter of search-engine marketing..." Publisher and author blog posts will bring attention to the title through web search engines that prompt the searcher to request the item through the library's PDA program. Where searches initiate in the library catalog, publishers need to be able to influence what information is included, and more importantly, how the discovery service will let a patron find the title. A test search for 1491 by Charles Mann, published by Random House, reveals thousand of holding libraries in WorldCat, a brief description on the publisher's website, a limited description in the Princeton University Library catalog, and the most detailed description on Amazon. The University of Chicago Library has a larger entry for the book than Princeton and credits Syndetics with the provision of enriched metadata. Publishers need to actively work to improve the metadata in library catalogs. The metadata currently provided to Bowker, who redistributes it for a fee, should be made available to libraries for free. Oxford University Press already provides free downloadable access to metadata for all of its books. Improved metadata and discovery coupled with PDA could allow publishers to offset any feared potential decrease in sales from the PDA model.
(Link to Web Source)

EPUB for Archival Preservation
Open Planets Foundation [blog], June 18 2012; by Johan van der Knijff

Although EPUB has been gaining popularity and interest as a publishing format, little attention has been given to its potential use for archival preservation. The Library of Congress has included some information on both version 2 and 3 of EPUB in its Sustainability of Digital Formats website. The National Library of the Netherlands/Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB) decided to conduct its own research on the issue and has published a report, EPUB for Archival Preservation. The report discusses the EPUB format and functionality and describes the differences between EPUB2 and EPUB3. Particular emphasis was placed on testing and validating steps important to preservation processing, specifically, object format identification and validation, and feature extraction. Tools that can perform these functions with EPUB were evaluated including DROID, Fido, Unix File utility, EpubCheck, and Epub-tools. Criteria used to determine preservation suitability included ubiquity, support, and interoperability; disclosure; documentation quality; stability; ease of identification, validation, and feature extraction; intellectual property rights; technical protection; transparency and complexity; external references; digital signature authenticity; and re-usability. Although many strengths of EPUB for preservation were noted, several concerns were identified such as stability over time with respect to compatibility between versions, poor support by existing characterization tools, potential use of DRM and/or encryption that would limit extraction capability, allowable use of incorporation by reference to externally stored content, allowable use of media types outside the core list, and allowable use of JavaScript resources. Final recommendations include the acceptance of EPUB 2 for archival applications, with a number of restrictions, and future acceptance of EPUB 3 when viewer support has improved. (Link to Web Source)

Experimenting in the App Lab: Exploring Mobile Content Models
EContent, June 18, 2012; by Eileen Mullan

The ubiquity of mobile devices has presented new challenges to the publishing industry, which was already struggling with the move from print to digital. But the popularity and functionality of mobile apps offers new opportunities for publishers to both distribute content and to create brand-centric innovations. Apps also offer new models for monetizing content on a platform where users are used to paying for everything they do, contrasted with online web content where users have more of an expectation of free. ABI Research found that the in-app payments model (as compared to pay-per download, subscription, and in-app advertising) generated the highest revenue and predicts an overall growth of $37.5 billion in 2016 (over 2011) for the combined models. Base-level apps typically range from $500 to $10,000 to develop. Apps that are storefronts to the publisher's content are commonly used by publishers and some even "upsell" to other apps that provide additional uses for content. Many publishers have been using the subscription model, especially for magazines, through the Apple store, even though Apple takes a 30% cut. And the freemium model of allowing free trials prior to purchasing subscriptions has seen some success. Print magazine subscribers are often given free digital access, using easy mobile device authentication as the leverage to add value to print. Microtransactions (paying for incremental content in small monetary amounts), though not yet widely in use, are a potential game-changer, especially in a mobile environment and fits well with the publishing trend to smaller e-singles. Instead of creating an app, publishers could release an API to their content that third parties can use to create apps and charge the app developer a content re-use fee. 2012 may become the year when user-generated content takes off, especially as do-it-yourself app-building tools become more available and the cost of entry to become a publisher and app developer decreases. Publishers must include mobile and apps in their digital strategy to keep pace with this growing market, push the mobile interface and experience to their web content and users, and consider integrating their apps with social media sites. (Link to Web Source)