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Draft Standards

Draft standards are released as Draft Standards for Trial Use (DSTFU) to allow implementers to test the standard. At the end of the trial period the standard may be balloted, revised or withdrawn.


Z39.95-200x, Cost of Resource Exchange (CORE) Protocol

Trial Use Period: April 1, 2009 - March 31, 2010


Abstract: CORE defines an XML schema to facilitate the exchange of financial information related to the acquisition of library resources between systems. The two systems may be within the same organization, e.g., an ILS and an ERMS, or from two different organizations, e.g., a subscription agent and a library.

Status: This Draft Standard for Trial Use was developed by the CORE Working Group and approved by the Business Information Topic Committee (3/31/09).

About the Trial Use Period
Comments: All comments will be reviewed regularly by the CORE Working Group, and all comments will be reviewed, responded to, and made public at the end of the Trial Use period. Comments can be submitted online; sent directly to NISO, the Working Group, or the Topic Committee; or sent to the CORE Interest Group Discussion List.

Participant Expectations
Trial participants will be asked to implement the CORE protocol in their own organization (or with another trial implementer), participate in a discussion list during the trial to share experiences, and provide feedback on any needed changes to the protocol prior to final issuance of the standard. The Working Group will be available during the trial to provide guidance and answer questions.

Working Group Expectations
The CORE Working Group has made its best efforts at identifying a compact yet useful structure for query and delivery of relevant acquisitions data.  Until our efforts are tested and validated by implementers and the marketplace, our job is not complete.  We expect that, as implementation and trial work begins, flaws will be identified – that is the goal of a Draft Standard Trial.  We stand ready to address any flaws, errors, or omissions that arise, with the goal being a more perfect CORE standard.


Z39.91 - 200x Collection Description Specification

Trial Use Comment Period: November 1, 2005 - October 31, 2006

Abstract: This draft standard defines a means of describing collections, where a collection is defined as an aggregation of terms. The draft standard takes the form of a Dublin Core Application Profile, a specification of how metadata terms from the Dublin Core metadata vocabularies and from other metadata vocabularies, some constructed for use in association with this Dublin Core association profile, are used to construct a description of a collection, in accordance with the DCMI Abstract Model. It also specifies an XML binding for serializing such descriptions for interchange between applications.

Status: This draft standard was originally developed as part of the NISO Metasearch Initiative by NISO Standards Committee BB (Task Group 2) - Collection Description. It is currently being revised so that it may come in front of the Content & Collection Management Topic Committee for their review and possible approval to send it to the NISO Voting Members for approval as a NISO standard (2009).


Z39.92 - 200x Information Retrieval Service Description Specification

Abstract: This standard describes a method of describing Information Retrieval oriented electronic services, including but not limited to those services made available via the Z39.50, SRU/SRW, and OAI protocols. The standard addresses the need for machine readable descriptions of services in order to enable automatic discovery of and interaction with previously unknown systems. It specifies an abstract model for service description and a binding to XML for interchange.

Trial Use Comment Period: November 1, 2005 - October 31, 2006 

Status: This draft standard was originally developed as part of the NISO Metasearch Initiative by NISO Standards Committee BC (Task Group 3) - Search/Retrieve. NISO's Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee agreed to send this to the NISO Voting Members for approval as a NISO standard if and when Z39.91 is approved to send to ballot (3/16/09).