BETHESDA, MD - August 23, 2006 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announced today that Todd Carpenter will take over as Managing Director, effective September 1, 2006. Carpenter steps into NISO's leadership position at a time when the Board of Directors has begun implementing a strategic plan designed to improve constituency relationships, standards development, and operational procedures.
"NISO's new strategic plan calls for a new leader with a deep understanding of our members' needs as well as their existing practices and priorities," said Carl Grant, President and COO of VTLS and NISO's Board Chair. "We believe Todd has the acumen we need and the vision to ensure that NISO's contributions to the NISO community remain valuable."
Leadership in collaborative initiatives and partnerships among libraries and publishers has been a key aspect of Carpenter's career. As Director of Business Development with BioOne, a not-for-profit online journal aggregator, he has served the goals of both constituencies by enhancing the products, services and distribution that BioOne provides to participant publishers and subscribers. Among Carpenter's successes at BioOne was the development and execution of a multi-faceted business model realignment, which balances library fiscal constraints with publisher's revenue needs as institutions transition from print to electronic subscription models.
Previously, Carpenter was at the Johns Hopkins University Press, where he directed the marketing of their 60 academic journals and was closely involved in the growth of Project MUSE, JHUP's online aggregation of humanities and social science journals. He also held marketing and business development positions at the Energy Intelligence Group, a news service covering the oil and natural gas industries, and the Haworth Press, an academic and professional publisher. He is a graduate of Syracuse University, earned a masters degree in marketing from The Johns Hopkins University, and is an active member of the Society for Scholarly Publishing.
"This is an incredible opportunity at a key juncture in NISO's evolution," said Carpenter. "Standards development is the single best example of where cooperation serves the interests of the library, publishers, and technical-provider communities. I am excited about implementing NISO's strategic plan, which is focused on improving the efficiency of information standards development, expanding the scope of NISO's services, and enhancing involvement of each of NISO's key constituencies."
About the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire life cycle of an information standard. NISO (www.niso.org) is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
A NISO sponsored workshop, Managing Electronic Collections: Strategies from Content to Users will be held in Denver, CO on September 28-30, 2006.