NISO Professional Development Events, October and November 2026
October 2026
New! NISO Training Series
Copyright Essentials from A to AI: A 2026 NISO Training Series
Thursdays, October 1–November 19, 2026, 11:00am–12:30pm (Eastern Standard Time, US & Canada)
This training series is designed for anyone interested in where copyright law intersects with library and academic spaces and the tensions that shape those interactions. Each session pairs conceptual understanding with discussions of how power and market dynamics shape outcomes in practice.
The series opens with the foundations of the US copyright system and the critical framework that runs throughout the course—asking for each topic what is being protected, who benefits, who is excluded, and what assumptions the system makes. From there, sessions move through fair use and the public domain, statutory exceptions for libraries, and a structured mid-point session that uses cases from music, sports, and popular culture as a laboratory for applying that framework in small group discussion. With participants having put the analytical framework into practice, the second half of the series turns to the more complex institutional terrain of licensing and market power, open movements and author rights, and the unresolved questions surrounding copyright and AI.
The sessions will hold space for productive tension, collaborative discussion, and reflection on how we might navigate contradictory roles with integrity. The series concludes with a capstone session where participants will be able to work on designing or refining programs and practices for their own organizations which involve copyright concerns.
NISO Webinar
Deep Dive: The Continued March Toward Open Science
Wednesday, October 14, 2026, 11:00am–12:00pm (Eastern Standard Time, US & Canada)
Building on recorded conversations from the NISO archive, this program updates the open science discussion with a focus on infrastructure and incentives: aligning repositories and workflows with FAIR/CARE, rights and licensing for reuse, privacy and ethical guardrails for sensitive data, and practical steps to support reproducibility, openness of methods, and responsible data sharing.
Confirmed speakers include: Ashley Farley, Program Officer of Knowledge and Research Services, Gates Foundation, Stephanie Russo Carroll, Associate Professor, Public Health and American Indian Studies Graduate Program, University of Arizona. The program will be moderated by Jewel Cummins, Doctoral Scholar, American Indian Studies, University of Arizona.
NISO Public Open Webinar
NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Webinar: Is There AI in My Search Results and Why Should I Care?
Thursday, October 15, 2026, 10:00am–11:00am (Eastern Standard Time, US & Canada)
In 2024, the NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Standing Committee published Generative Artificial Intelligence and Web-Scale Discovery. This white paper examined the results of a survey conducted by ODI to assess the information community's perception of the impact of AI on library discovery services. As part of the outcomes from this report, and to continue engaging with the community, ODI will host a series of webinars that explore AI, discovery, and the future of library services.
In the second webinar of the series, "Is There AI in My Search Results and Why Should I Care?", we will delve into the integration of AI tools throughout the authoring and discovery pipeline. Join ODI co-chair Rachel Kessler (Clarivate), ODI Standing Committee member Marshall Breeding (Library Technology Guides), along with Brendan Quinn and Ashleigh Faith (EBSCO) as they discuss how users of library-provided research tools can identify when AI has been used in creating, indexing, selecting, or presenting information within a discovery tool, when this information is significant, and what stakeholders can do to improve transparency and user understanding of the role AI plays in search results.
NISO Public Open Webinar
Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP) Fall 2026 Public Update Webinar
Tuesday, October 20, 2026, 12:00pm Noon–1:00pm (Eastern Standard Time, US & Canada)
Networks of libraries have a long tradition of working together to expand their resources and provide more comprehensive coverage across all subjects through sharing of resources. As one of these strategies, larger networks of institutions have recently explored wider adoption of cooperative collections management, which this project defines as a process by which networks of institutions work collaboratively to acquire, manage, circulate, and preserve collections across the network. In August of 2022, NISO, Lehigh University Library, and PALCI, along with more than 25 other partner organizations, received an IMLS National Leadership Grant to support the development of best practices for this lifecycle process and to prototype tools to support elements of the workflow. The Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project seeks to overcome serious barriers to wider implementations, including the lack of available vendor-neutral interoperable systems, adequate governance and decision-making frameworks, and assessment tools.
As part of the related Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project (CCLIP), several working groups worked in concert with the CCLP leadership and with each other to produce a Recommended Practice. The NISO CCLIP Recommended Practice was published in June. The Recommended Practice documents exchange protocols for gathering, normalizing, and exchanging holdings information, contractual information, retention obligations, usage data, and the publisher/marketplace information necessary to support collaborative decisions at the local and cross-institutional levels.
NISO will host a free public webinar on Tuesday, October 20th at 12 PM Eastern to update the community on the Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project (CCLP), provide information on the recently published NISO CCLIP Recommended Practice, the technical development behind the related CYCLOPS software, and provide information on how you can get involved!
November 2026
NISO Webinar
All’s Well That’s Regulated: AI Policy and Governance
Wednesday, November 18, 2026, 11:00 am–12:00 pm (Eastern Standard Time, US & Canada)
As governments around the world pursue differing approaches to AI, from accelerating innovation to introducing more measured regulation, how do we balance speed with safeguards? Taking a global perspective on AI policy and governance, we’ll consider accountability, auditability, intellectual property, and public impact, along with pragmatic approaches to advancing innovation while maintaining trust.
Speakers include: Dr Andres Guadamuz, Reader in Intellectual Property Law at the University of Sussex and the Editor in Chief of the Journal of World Intellectual Property.