Demand-Driven Acquisitions Working Group

Co-chairs: Barbara Kawecki (YBP Library Services); Michael Levine-Clark (University of Denver)
DDA Workroom
New Work Item Proposal: Develop Recommended Practices for Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs

As described in its work item proposal, this Working Group is developing recommendations on best practices for populating and managing the pool of monographic titles under consideration for potential purchase, including methods for automated updating and removal of discovery records; development of consistent models for the three basic aspects of e-book DDA—free discovery to prevent inadvertent transactions, temporary lease, and purchase—that work for publishers and libraries; methods for managing DDA of multiple formats; and ways in which print-on-demand (POD) solutions can be linked to DDA.

The DDA subgroups—technical processes, access methods, and metric modeling—have been meeting regularly to detail further topics and questions as part of the information gathering phase of this work. Each subgroup is now formulating specific questions in its areas that can be utilized in individual interviews with stakeholder representatives or used in a survey that the Working Group is planning to conduct more broadly. The group is considering holding a focus group at the ALA Annual Conference in Chicago in late June.

Co-chairs Michael Levine-Clark and Barbara Kawecki presented on the work of the DDA-RP group at ER&L in March 2013, where an impromptu focus group of stakeholders was also held.

I² (Institutional Identifiers) Working Group

Co-Chairs: Grace Agnew (Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
I² Workroom
I² Recommended Practice (NISO RP-17-2013)

This group's recommended practice, Institutional Identification: Identifying Organizations in the Information Supply Chain, was published by NISO earlier this month, as described in the press release. This Recommended Practice describes the work done by the NISO Institutional Identifier (I²) Working Group to define the requirements for a standard identifier for institutional identification in the supply chain. It also provides background on the collaboration agreement between the NISO I² Working Group and the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) International Agency to use the ISNI standard (ISO 27729) and the ISNI-IA's infrastructure for institutional identification, rather than publish a separate standard for institutions.

The I² Working Group was originally established to develop a robust, scalable, and interoperable standard for identifying a core entity in any information management or sharing transaction—the institution. The I² Working Group performed extensive community needs assessment with the publishing, library, and repository use sectors, and it is this detailed analysis that is reflected in the Recommended Practice.

PIE-J (Presentation & Identification of E-Journals) Working Group

Co-chairs: Cindy Hepfer (University of Buffalo, SUNY), Bob Boissy (Springer)
PIE-J Workroom
PIE-J Recommended Practice (NISO RP-16-2013)

The PIE-J Recommended Practice, PIE-J: Presentation & Identification of E-Journals (NISO RP-16-2013) was published in late March and is now available from the PIE-J Workroom page. As described in the press release, electronic journals (e-journals) are a critical component of the global scholarly infrastructure. As is the case with print journals, the contents of e-journals and their related metadata become part of the historical scholarly record. Citations to articles in print journals, and now in e-journals, form the basis for much scholarly research. The PIE-J Recommended Practice provides guidance on the presentation of these e-journals—particularly in the areas of title presentation, accurate use of ISSN, and citation practices—to publishers and platform providers, and it is hoped that it will solve some long-standing concerns of serials librarians, ultimately helping users working in online environments to more easily access article-based materials using citation elements.

A PIE-J Standing Committee is now in the process of being formed. This group will assist with support and publicity for the Recommended Practice and manage communications to determine when updates to the recommendations are needed. As part of the materials to help the Standing Committee with its work, the Working Group created two forms of a brochure for PIE-J; both are available via the group's Workroom page.

Steve Shadle, PIE-J Working Group member, presented on PIE-J on the April 2013 NISO Open Teleconference, for which a recording is available.

SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Adam Chesler (Business Expert Press), Anne McKee (Greater Western Library Alliance)
SERU Workroom
SERU Recommended Practice (NISO RP-7-2012)

The SERU Recommended Practice was updated in 2012 to enable it to become more flexible in order to be used with online products beyond e-journals (around which it was originally created in 2008). At the same time, the SERU public workroom pages were substantially revised to better support publishers and libraries in understanding and use of the SERU material. The SERU Registry continues to be updated with new supporters of SERU and is intended to enable publishers and librarians to more easily identify each other.

The SERU Standing Committee is working on its next phases to further publicize SERU and educate libraries and publishers via direct contacts and public presentations at industry conferences. One project includes a short video of testimonials on how SERU has aided the licensing process.

SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) Standing Committee

Co-chairs: Bob McQuillan (Innovative Interfaces), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
SUSHI Workroom
SUSHI standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2013)
COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-2012)

This Standing Committee provides maintenance and support for ANSI/NISO Z39.93, The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol, and acts as the maintenance group for the COUNTER schema by providing recommendations to COUNTER and making changes to the COUNTER XML schemas (as approved by COUNTER).

The pdated SUSHI Standard, including minor edits of an additional error code and an additional appendix containing best practices for security, was published in early March. The Standing Committee continues its work of pursuing relevant changes to the SUSHI schema in light of the release of COUNTER 4 and making applicable updates to the SUSHI workroom pages, including finalization of a new logo. The group intends to implement a continuous maintenance procedure, which will enable it to more smoothly shuttle through further updates to the standard.

Z39.7 Data Dictionary Standing Committee

Chair: Martha Kyrillidou, Association of Research Libraries (ARL)
Z39.7 Data Dictionary

The Information Services and Use: Metrics & statistics for libraries and information providers – Data Dictionary (ANSI/NISO Z39.7) is an online standard that is continuously maintained. The purpose of the Data Dictionary is to assist the information community by indicating and defining useful quantifiable information to measure the resources and performance of libraries and to provide a body of valid and comparable data on American libraries. It identifies standard definitions, methods, and practices relevant to library statistics activities in the United States. The Data Dictionary is provided online, and any user may submit suggested changes. The Standing Committee then reviews these suggestions during its monthly phone calls.

The latest updated version of Z39.7 has been approved by its voting pool as a revision to the standard. It is now awaiting ANSI approval before publication, at which time it will be made available via the group's web pages. The Standing Committee continues to discuss changes to relevant statistical surveys in the community, and expects to continue to examine relevant ISO standards including ISO 2789, International Library Statistics, and ISO 16439, Methods and procedures for assessing the impact of libraries.

Improving OpenURL Through Analytics (IOTA) Working Group

Chair: Adam Chandler (Cornell University)
IOTA Workroom
IOTA Website including blog and analytic log files
Follow on Twitter: @nisoiota

The IOTA (Improving OpenURLs Through Analytics) Working Group was chartered to investigate the feasibility of creating industry-wide, transparent, and scalable metrics for evaluating and comparing the quality of OpenURL implementations across content providers, so as to provide benchmarks against which improvements to OpenURLs can be made, thereby bettering linking for end users. The IOTA reporting system is available at openurlquality.niso.org/ and continues to welcome data and comments from participating libraries to help with analysis.

The output of the IOTA Working Group—namely two documents, a Technical Report detailing the overall analysis of the group, and a Recommended Practice directed toward link resolver vendors—is expected to be published in the next month, following approval of the NISO Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee. The Working Group is now discussing potential formation of a Standing Committee to help with education and support.

NISO/UKSG Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) Phase 2 Working Group

Co-chairs: Andreas Biedenbach (Independent Publishing Professional), Sarah Pearson (University of Birmingham)
Contact KBART Chairs for endorsement approval
KBART Workroom (NISO)
KBART Website (UKSG)

The NISO/UKSG KBART Phase II Working Group is working to provide support for the Phase I Recommended Practice, NISO RP-9-2010, KBART: Knowledge Bases and Related Tools, and is also developing a second Recommended Practice to build on the recommendations of the first, specifically addressing the areas of metadata for e-books and conference proceedings and packages licensed via consortia deals. In addition, the Working Group is exploring the area of open access materials and how this metadata might be published and shared in knowledgebases.

The Working Group is now finalizing a draft-for-comment version of the Phase II recommended practice covering the areas listed above, which it expects to make available for public input by the end of May 2013. The group also continues to work with information providers for validation of content files per the Phase I Recommended Practice and the subsequent inclusion of the information providers to the KBART Registry. (Registration of contact details does not require endorsement, though all content providers, from major databases to small publishers, are encouraged to publicly endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by submitting a sample file to the KBART Working Group. Once the file's format and content has been reviewed and approved, and the provider has made it publicly available (in line with the recommendations), the provider will be added to a public list of endorsing providers.)

KBART Working Group member Chad Hutchens provided an update on KBART activities at the ER&L conference in March 2013.

NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol) Standing Committee

Chair: Mike Dicus (Ex Libris)
Maintenance Agency: EnvisionWare (contact: Rob Walsh)
NCIP Workroom
NCIP Maintenance Agency
ANSI/NISO Z39.83-1-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange - Part 1: Protocol (NCIP)
ANSI/NISO Z39.83-2-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) Part 2: Implementation Profile 1

On monthly calls, the NCIP Standing Committee reviews status of implementations and other general business based on the latest version of NCIP, version 2.02, published in 2012 and available via the NCIP Workroom page. Twice a year, meetings are held in person in order to review ongoing updates to the NCIP protocol. And each month the group meets via conference call to discuss implementor updates and general business, including the best way to collate and publicize vendor support for NCIP areas.

The spring 2013 meeting took place in Dublin, Ohio, on April 22-23 and included a review of Maintenance Agency tasks and discussion of general library communication frameworks (SIP and others) as well as an examination of change requests.

Open Discovery Initiative Working Group

Co-chairs: Marshall Breeding (Vanderbilt University), Jenny Walker (Ex Libris)
ODI Workroom

The Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) aims at defining standards and/or best practices for the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search. The Working Group is made up of discovery vendors, primary and secondary publishers, and librarians and has been meeting regularly since January 2012.

Four ODI subgroups have been working over the last several months in the areas of: technical formats; communication of libraries' rights/level of indexing; definition of fair linking; and usage statistics. Individual draft documents from each of these groups are in the last stages of finalization before being put together into a single draft-for-comment, expected to be made available in late May 2013. As previously noted, the groups made use of a survey circulated to the community and published a survey report that summarizes that information.

Roger Schonfeld of Ithaka and Dave Lindahl of University of Missouri Kansas City presented with Nettie Lagace of NISO at the April 2013 CNI Spring Members meeting.

Those interested in following the work of this effort can join the ODI observer mailing list.

ResourceSync Working Group

Co-chairs: Todd Carpenter (NISO), Herbert Van de Sompel (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
ResourceSync Workroom
ResourceSync Framework Specification - Beta Draft

The ResourceSync working group continues its work of researching, developing, prototyping, testing, and deploying mechanisms for the large-scale synchronization of web resources, intended to allow for the synchronization of web-based objects themselves, not just their metadata, and builds on the OAI-PMH strategies. The core group has been funded by the Sloan Foundation and is augmented by other industry and research participants, some of whom are sponsored by JISC.

A beta specification was released for comment earlier this year for which feedback was submitted via an open Google Group. Subsequently, the Working Group held a meeting in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in late March to review progress, address public comments, and set a plan for the remainder of the work. The group intends that the core functionality of the specification, representing a functional replacement of OAI-PMH, will be updated per the comments and discussion and will move forward for approval. Other features, such as push notification and archive capabilities, are desirable but can't be completed in the time frame for the project; it is likely that further development for these will proceed in the future through an additional path.

It's planned that the final specification for Working Group, Topic Committee, and finally NISO Voting Member approval will be complete at the end of May. Implementations of the specification, including Python and Java code libraries, and a DSpace-specific Java implementation, are now underway and will be available soon. Presentations/tutorials are planned for the following conferences in upcoming months: WWW2013 (Rio de Janeiro, May); 8th OAI Workshop on Innovations in Scholarly Communication (Geneva, June); Open Repositories (Charlottetown, PEI, July); JCDL (Indianapolis, July); TPDL (Malta, September); and the LITA Forum (Louisville, November). NISO is also planning webinars and teleconferences for the group to discuss its work.

The core group members also published an article in D-Lib Magazine in January/February 2013, A Technical Framework for Resource Synchronization, which is further detail on a previous introductory paper last year.

Specification for Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group

Co-chairs: Ed Pentz (CrossRef), Cameron Neylon (PLOS), Greg Tananbaum (SPARC)
Open Access Metadata and Indicators Workroom
Open Access Metadata and Indicators Work Item Proposal

The working group for this project, still in its early stages, has recently begun meeting. This project will develop standardized bibliographic metadata and visual indicators to describe the accessibility of journal articles as well as potentially describe how "open" the item is. Many offerings are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other descriptions; the terms offered vary between publishers and, in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author. Adding to the potential confusion, a number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are "open" while the rest of the journal's content is available only by subscription or license. No standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is freely readable and what re-use rights might be available to readers. Visual indicators or icons indicating the openness of an article are inconsistent in both design and use across publishers or even across journals from the same publisher.

The project will focus initially on metadata elements that describe the readership rights associated with an OA article. Specifically, the NISO Working Group will determine the optimal mechanisms to describe and transmit the rights, if any, an arbitrary user has to access a specific article from any internet connection point. Recommendations will include a means for distribution and aggregation of this metadata in machine-readable form. The group will also consider the feasibility of incorporating information on re-use rights and the feasibility of reaching agreement on transmission of that data.

Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) Working Group

Co-chairs: John Bodfish (OCLC), Ted Koppel (Auto-Graphics)
SIP Workroom

The Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP), introduced by 3M in 1993, provides a standard communication mechanism to allow Integrated Library System (ILS) applications and self-service devices to communicate seamlessly to perform self-service transactions and has become the de facto standard around the world to integrate ILSs and self-service devices. This Working Group is directing the existing SIP version 3.0 specification through the NISO standardization process.

The SIP Working Group began its work in October 2012 by identifying four important high-level areas to be considered as relevant to the SIP3 work product. These are: the SIP3 documents themselves, including revisions/corrections/additions, resolving ambiguities, etc.; the Maintenance Agency; SIP3's relation to privacy standards and security; and the relation to NCIP. The group is currently working through resolving a significant list of items pertaining to the SIP3 documents, some of which are major issues requiring quite a bit of discussion and research to address.

When the revision of the documents is complete, the Working Group will address questions of compliance, certification, and assured interoperability. Updated materials in conjunction with the group's work will be added to its Workroom page as they are finalized.