NISO Receives Mellon Foundation Grant to Assess the Current State and Future Needs of a New Bibliographic Framework

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has been awarded a $48,516 grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to fund a study to determine the needs and requirements of the library, higher education, and non-profit networked information communities to ensure they are able to use and exchange bibliographic data in an increasingly networked, linked data environment. The funds will be used to hold one face-to-face meeting in the United States and four global webinars, accompanied by workgroup efforts during the periods between webinars. These meetings will be conducted to coordinate the needs and requirements of key communities, including libraries, technologists, and library system providers, as well as other international standards development organizations.

"The bibliographic exchange environment in which the majority of the world's libraries operate has been based on the Machine Readable Cataloging (MARC) standard since it was developed in the late1960s," explains Todd Carpenter, NISO's Executive Director. "The Library of Congress has been working intensively on the future of bibliographic control since 2006 when it formed the Working Group on the Future of Bibliographic Control and recently announced it had contracted with Zepheira to help accelerate the launch of the Bibliographic Framework Initiative. The Resource Description and Access (RDA), published in 2008 to replace the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, already provides a model for mapping some of MARC data into Web resources, but there are significant challenges left in making sure that one can express concepts in a new data format. Many organizations are moving forward with their own initiatives to expose bibliographic data, without organized coordination or consensus about community priorities, leading to duplicated work, delays, and inefficiencies. Given the diverse community that is impacted by bibliographic exchange and citation as well as the tremendous investments made in existing MARC-based library systems and records, there is a need for high-level coordination of activities to help avoid duplication and fragmentation of the bibliographic exchange community."

The goal of this project will be to engage a group of key stakeholders-from the communities of libraries, system suppliers, and higher education/research institutions, as well as non-traditional users of bibliographic information-to develop consensus around a community roadmap of needed activities related to a New Bibliographic Framework based on linked data, identify exchange points where standards development is needed, and document areas where functionality testing should be performed so that feedback can be provided to all participants in linked-data bibliographic exchange.

Interested participants should contact Nettie Lagace, Associate Director for Programs.

November Webinar: Beyond Publish or Perish: Alternative Metrics for Scholarship

Increasingly, many aspects of scholarly communication-particularly publication, research data, and peer review-undergo scrutiny by researchers and scholars. Many of these practitioners are engaging in a variety of ways with Alternative Metrics (#altmetrics in the Twitterverse). Alternative Metrics take many forms but often focus on efforts to move beyond proprietary bibliometrics and traditional forms of peer referencing in assessing the quality and scholarly impact of published work. Join NISO on November 14 from 1:00 - 2:30 (EST) for a webinar that will present several emerging aspects of Alternative Metrics.

Topics and speakers:

• Article-Level Metrics at PLOS – Martin Fenner, Technical Lead, PLOS Article-Level Metrics project
• Total-Impact and Other Altmetrics Initiatives – Jason Priem, Ph.D. Student, Co-Principal Investigator, Total Impact
• Peer Evaluation, A Social Network and Independent Open Access and Open Scholarship initiative – Aalam Wassef, Founder of Peer Evaluation

Registration is per site (access for one computer) and closes at 12:00 pm Eastern on November 14, 2012. Discounts are available for NISO and NASIG members and students. LSA member organizations can attend free as NISO webinars are included in membership. 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.

December Webinar: Connecting the Dots: Constellations in the Linked Data Universe

The universe of linked data is rapidly expanding and our community is finding innovative ways to link and apply data. NISO's webinar on December 12, 2012, from 1:00-2:30 p.m. (EST) will cover several initiatives and projects using linked data to improve discovery and reuse of information.

Topics and speakers are:

• OCLC Linked Data Initiatives and Activities – Richard Wallis, Technology Evangelist, OCLC
• Linked Data and Library Catalogs – Tom Johnson, Digital Applications Librarian, Oregon State University

Registration is per site (access for one computer) and closes at 12:00 pm Eastern on December 12. Discounts are available for NISO and NASIG members and students. LSA member organizations can attend free as NISO webinars are included in membership. 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 2013 Education Schedule Announced

NISO's Education Committee has planned a robust educational program for 2013 that includes three virtual conferences in addition to the monthly webinars, an in-person forum, and six joint webinars with the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI). Focused on standards, best practices, and technologies in the library, publishing, and scholarly information communities, the programs are an excellent and cost-effective method for current awareness and learning about standards and cutting-edge technology. NISO educational programs are routinely praised for their outstanding selection of speakers representing a diversity of viewpoints across the scholarly information community.

Virtual conferences-six-hour forums held over the Internet-are a new addition to NISO's educational programs. Topics for the three events are: Future Perfect: How Libraries Are Implementing Emerging Technologies (February), EPUB3: What Libraries Need to Know (April), and Web-Scale Discovery Services: Transforming Access to Library Resources (November).

A two-day in-person forum on Revolution or Evolution: The Impact of Electronic Content will be held in Philadelphia in October. A live stream option will also be available for distance viewing. Both in-person and live stream registrants will have access to a recorded version of the event.

NISO webinars, held every month except July, will cover a range of topics from Behaving Like a Startup to Metadata for Preservation, Universal Accessibility, Open Access Content, Streaming Media Collections, Copyright Decisions, Altmetrics, Mobile Technology, and Library Linked Data. Two-part webinars on consecutive Wednesdays will be held in March and September on Evolving Trends in Collection Development and Research Data Curation, respectively.

NISO and DCMI continue their successful joint webinars in 2013 and are adding an additional event for a total of six. With a focus on linked data, the planned topics are: Update on the Bibliographic Framework Initiative; Deployment of RDA; Semantic Mashups, Linked Data in Developing Countries; Metadata for Public Sector Administration; and Cooperative Authority Control.

Package deals (buy 4, get 3 or buy 7, get all 13) are available for the NISO webinars. NISO members receive discounts to all events. NISO will continue for 2013 its new member benefit to Library Standards Alliance (LSA) members of one free connection to all thirteen NISO-only webinars. NASIG members may register at the member rate for NISO-only webinars and DCMI members may register at the member rate for joint NISO/DCMI webinars.

More information about all the 2013 events is available on the NISO website. Registration will be open shortly.

For information about joining NISO to obtain the free LSA member webinar registration and member discounts for all events, visit: www.niso.org/about/join/.

New on the NISO Website

• NISO and UKSG Announce Five More Publishers Endorse KBART, press release
• Presentation slides from the October 10 webinar MARC and FRBR: Friends or Foes?
• Audio recording from October 15 NISO Open Teleconference on the E-Book Special Interest Group
• Presentation slides from the October 18-19 forum The E-Book Renaissance, Part II: Challenges and Opportunities
• Presentation slides from the October 24 NISO/DCMI webinar Embedding Linked Data Invisibly into Web Pages: Strategies and Workflows for Publishing with RDFa
• SUSHI Server Registry has been updated with a new a new provider: Informa Healthcare

ARMA International, Call for participation – Auditing for Compliance with Records and Information Management Best Practices

ARMA is seeking volunteers to develop this new technical report that will be a broad-based investigation of the audit function as it should be employed across the records lifecycle. The primary question that this publication will answer is: "How does a records professional incorporate auditing into an organization's records program activities?" This publication will leverage a variety of current standards and guidance documents, including the ARMA International Generally Accepted Recordkeeping Principles® and ISO standards pertaining to archives/records management, security, and auditing. Applications to participate on the working group will be accepted through 12/15/2012. Apply online.

BIC and Nielsen Book, New Collaborative effort for Global Subject Codes Standard

Book industry representatives from 16 countries announced the formation of a new, global standard to categorize and classify book content by subject. The project, initially known as "Thema," was first announced during the Tools of Change Supply Chain Conference taking place during the Frankfurt International Book Fair. The new standard will be a general purpose classification scheme for the book industry, meant initially to work alongside existing standards such as BIC, BISAC, CLIL etc. The long range goal is to move all markets to the global standard, helping to eliminate confusion among both upstream and downstream.

ISO 19005-3:2012, Document management – Electronic document file format for long-term preservation - Part 3: Use of ISO 32000-1 with support for embedded files (PDF/A-3)

Specifies the use of the Portable Document Format (PDF) 1.7, as formalized in ISO 32000-1, for preserving the static visual representation of page-based electronic documents over time in addition to allowing any type of other content to be included as an embedded file or attachment.

ISO/IEC 27037:2012, Information technology – Security techniques – Guidelines for identification, collection, acquisition and preservation of digital evidence

Provides guidelines for specific activities in the handling of digital evidence—identification, collection, acquisition, and preservation of potential digital evidence that can be of evidential value. It also provides guidance to individuals with respect to common situations encountered throughout the digital evidence handling process and assists organizations in their disciplinary procedures and in facilitating the exchange of potential digital evidence between jurisdictions.

ISO/IEC 40500:2012, Information technology – W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0

Covers a wide range of recommendations for making Web content more accessible to a wider range of people with disabilities. WCAG 2.0 success criteria are written as testable statements that are not technology-specific. Guidance about satisfying the success criteria in specific technologies, as well as general information about interpreting the success criteria, is provided in separate documents.

ISO/TR 17068:2012, Information and documentation – Trusted third party repository for digital records

Details the authorized custody services of a Trusted Third Party Repository (TTPR) in order to ensure provable integrity and authenticity of the clients' digital records and serve as a source of reliable evidence. It describes the services and processes to be provided by a TTPR for the clients' digital records during the retention period, to ensure trust. It also details the criteria of "trustworthiness" and the particular requirements of TTPR services, hardware and software systems, and management. ISO/TR 17068:2012 has the limitation that the authorized custody of the stored records is between only the third party and the client.

W3C Working Draft, Linked Data Platform 1.0

A set of best practices and simple approach for a read-write Linked Data architecture, based on HTTP access to web resources that describe their state using RDF. It provides some new rules as well as clarifications and extensions of Tim Berners-Lee's four rules of Linked Data Additionally, it is the intention of this document to enable additional rules and layered groupings of rules, such as additional specifications. The scope is intentionally narrow to provide a set of key rules for reading and writing Linked Data that most, if not all, other specifications will depend on and implementations will support.

Stakeholders Strive to Define Standards for Web-Scale Discovery Systems
The Digital Shift/Library Journal, October 11, 2012; by Michael Kelley

A growing number of academic and research libraries are implementing one of the four major web-scale discovery solutions—EBSCO Discovery Service (EDS), Ex Libris's Primo from, Serials Solutions' Summon, or OCLC 's WorldCat Local. The goal is to provide a single, Google-like search portal to all of the library's scholarly resource. These services and their usage are so new that a number of issues have risen including defining what resources are indexed, how indexing is done, how results are ranked, and how usage can be reported. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) launched an Open Discovery Initiative, chaired by Jenny Walker and Marshall Breeding will be developing best practices for information providers on their provision of content to these services. One key deliverable from the NISO ODI team will be a vocabulary to ensure that all the stakeholders are talking about the same concepts with the same meaning. The National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) has drafted a Discovery Services Code of Practice. Librarians have been unable to get an accurate determination of what content will be covered by the indexes of the competing discovery services and how deeply coverage is indexed, making it difficult to make needed assessments when choosing a system or measuring its value after implementation. Laura Morse, Harvard University, feels transparency in the indexing practices is critical not just for the librarians but for the researchers who use the system, who need to feel confident about what literature their searches have utilized. A key question for libraries, Breeding says, is whether the service effectively covers the library's subscriptions. He also points out that it is important to know whether the full text is indexed and/or if metadata is used. Michael Gorrell, at EBSCO, asserts that quality subject indexing in addition to full-text searches are needed for precision in searching and relevance ranking. Bonnie Lawlor, NFAIS, points out that content providers also care about knowing whether and how their resources were indexed. The Music Library Association issued a Music Discovery Requirements document last August to identify some of the unique needs for music-related discovery that aren't currently being met. Andrew Asher, Bucknell University, authored a report that discussed the need for understanding of discovery relevance ranking algorithms to better educate students in search techniques. Both EBSCO and OCLC have published some information about their relevancy ranking. The confidential and customized nature of the agreements between content providers and discovery services and the competitive advantages from each service's unique indexing algorithms makes it difficult to obtain full transparency. EBSCO and ProQuest (parent of Serials Solutions) have A&I products, but neither makes them available to the other's discovery service and neither contribute to Ex Libris's product. Some A&I Services are concerned that their value-added indexing needs a more sophisticated search interface or fear that providing their resources to discovery services could threaten their own brand, so many don't participate with any discovery vendor. MLA International Bibliography is an exception that is offered to all the services while PsycINFO is not offered for inclusion in any. EBSCO has been able to leverage its EBSCOHost service that includes many third-party A&I services through platform blending, and thus includes PsycINFO. Libraries also want an assurance that discovery searches will steer the users to the library's subscribed content rather than a fee-service for the same material. Bruce Heterick (JSTOR/Portico) feels that standards-compliant data about usage and referrals are critical for both librarians and content providers to determine the value of the services. All the different types of stakeholders involved in discovery services are watching or participating in the NISO and NFAIS initiatives in the hopes it will create the common practices needed for successful use of indexed discovery. (Link to Web Source)

From Bibliometrics To Altmetrics: A Changing Scholarly Landscape
College & Research Library News, November 2012; 73 (10); by Robin Chin Roemer and Rachel Borchadt

Bibliometrics, the methods used to measure the impact of scholarly literature, are increasingly being scrutinized in a world of websites, blogs, and social media. New, alternative metrics are in development that have been called altmetrics, cybermetrics, and webometrics. Among the general bibliometric resources are Google Scholar citations, which uses h-index and i10-index; SCImago that calculates journal rank and source normalized impact factor using Scopus data; Scopus itself, which calculates article, author, and journal-level metrics; and Thomson Reuter's Web of Knowledge, which introduced the h-index, and also uses impact factor, and Eigenfactor. Altmetrics resources include altmetrics.org, a major portal for alternative metrics tools and discussions; Impact Story, an open source tool for aggregating online altmetrics; PLoS article level metrics; Publish or Perish (PoP), a program to pull Google Scholar data using author name; and ReaderMeter a crowdsource tool using Mendeley readership data. Scholarly peer networks include Academia.edu, a platform for uploading and sharing papers; Mendeley, a portal that is both a social network and citation manager; Social Science Research Network, a leading article repository with site-specific metrics; and VIVO, a semantic web application that uses faculty profiles to find connections between researchers. Blogs covering altmetrics include: Citation Culture by Paul Wouters, Director of the Centre for Science and Technology Studies at Leiden University; the website of Jason Priem, a Ph.D. candidate at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill's School of Information and Library Science; and the Scholarly Kitchen from the Society for Scholarly Publishing. Bibliometrics research support services include Elsevier's Bibliometrics Research Program and the JISC-funded OII Toolkit for the Impact of Digitised Scholarly Resources developed by the Oxford Internet Institute. Several organizations hold regular conferences or workshops related to alternative metrics including the Altmetrics workshops at the ACM Web Science Conference and the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics. ASIS&T has a SIG on Metrics that has an electronic discussion list. (Link to Web Source)

Counting on COUNTER: The Current State of E-Resource Usage Data in Libraries
Computers in Libraries, 2(9), November 2012; by Josh Welker

Usage statistics about electronic resources are important to librarians for evaluating these resources and making acquisition decisions. Project COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of Networked Electronic Resources) was formed in 2002 to standardize the way these statistics are collected. In 2007, NISO developed a Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) protocol to automate the collection of COUNTER reports. Southwest Baptist University Libraries wanted cost-per-use data on their e-resources so created a SUSHI client to harvest their statistics. However, the SUSHI standard harvested all the COUNTER JR1 report data from a given vendor and didn't separate out usage by the different vendor's databases. This led the author to survey other COUNTER/SUSHI users about their experiences. Most of the 131 respondents were manually collecting usage data, not using SUSHI and that many vendors still did not provide COUNTER statistics. Over 40% of respondents spend 4 weeks or more gathering and processing usage statistics. The most useful metric was full-text retrievals. Session and turnaway data were considered the least useful. JR1 and DB1 were the most popular COUNTER reports. The biggest complaint from respondents was the lack of COUNTER reports and the inconsistency in data reporting, as well as vendors' low implementation of SUSHI. Suggested changes for COUNTER included more granularity in reporting, in particular the separation of databases from platforms. More tools for SUSHI implementation were also requested. Vendors and COUNTER need to make it easier to calculate cost per use and the SUSHI standard needs a method to filter by database. "There seems to be a categorical misunderstanding among vendors regarding why libraries want usage statistics. For the most part, librarians don't care about sessions, searches, IP addresses, or page views. It's all about cost per use." (Link to Web Source)

IETF Starts Work on Next-Generation HTTP Standard
ComputerWorld, October 3, 2012; by Joab Jackson

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has officially begun work on version 2 of the Hyptertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The SPDY protocol, another IETF standard, will be used as the foundation for HTTP 2.0. To address changes in how people interact with the web since the earlier version of HTTP—such as increased use of applications and multimedia—the new protocol "will reduce latency and streamline the process of how servers transmit content to browsers." Backwards compatibility with HTTP 1.1 will be retained, however. While the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) will still be relied on, additional transports may also be included. Julian Reschkeof, Alexey Melnikov and Martin Thomson will be the editors of the new revision, which is expected to be submitted for approval by 2014. (Link to Web Source)