Media Alert: Webinar on ONIX for Publications Licenses

Host: National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
Date: September 10, 2008 from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (Eastern Time)

Subject: ONIX for Publications Licenses (ONIX-PL): Simplifying License Expression

Description:
ONIX for Publications Licenses is a family of standard XML messaging protocols for exchanging licensing information that builds on the work of the Digital Libraries Federation Electronic Resource Management Initiative (ERMI) and NISO's License Expression Working Group (LEWG). This webinar will discuss the progress that has been made with the ONIX-PL standard, new implementations of the standard, and essential information about how this might benefit and impact operations.

Intended Audience:
This webinar is for librarians, publishers, and content providers who are interested in how to express licenses in a machine-readable format, load them into electronic resource management systems, link them to digital resources, and communicate key usage terms to users.

Speakers:

  • Jeff Aipperspach, Senior Product Manager, Serials Solutions
  • Rick Burke, Executive Director, The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC)
  • Alicia Wise, Chief Executive, Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and Chair, NISO ONIX-PL Working Group

The Statewide California Electronic Library Consortium (SCELC) and Serials Solutions are partnering with a number of publishers to test the transmission of licensing data using the ONIX-PL messages. In this trial, publishers will deliver machine readable license information in a standardized way via XML. In this way, ONIX-PL should eliminate mapping and manual entry of license terms in ERM systems and should improve the user interface for easily accessing terms. Alicia Wise, Chief Executive of the Publishers Licensing Society (PLS) and co-chair of the NISO ONIX-PL Working Group, will begin the event by describing in more detail the need for ONIX-PL, the benefits it provides for various stakeholders, and the ongoing maintenance she and her group will be doing with this standard as well as will provide an overview of the work done to get the trail to this stage. She will then be joined by Jeff Aipperspach, Senior Product Manager, Serials Solutions, and Rick Burke, Executive Director, SCELC, who will give their hands-on perspectives of the trial and how this project hopes to provide a model for future ONIX-PL implementations.

Background:
NISO's License Expression Working Group (LEWG), begun in 2005, initially focused on understanding the differences and mapping the data elements between the ERMI and the ONIX approaches to licensing information. Since then, much progress has been made and these two areas have become more clearly and distinctly defined. The ONIX-PL standard, developed to meet the needs of librarians and publishers on both sides of the Atlantic, is now nearing its pilot phase and we are poised to begin awareness raising campaigns. As a result, in mid-2008 NISO restructured the LEWG, replacing it with a new Working Group to focus specifically on development of the ONIX license messaging specification, and a second, short-term sub-committee of the Business Information Topic Committee that is tasked with conducting a survey of the current and emerging place of "ERMI", thus defined within the broader ERM landscape, to better determine how vendors are implementing the ERMI data dictionary and related documents and how libraries are making use of these systems and services.

Information and Registration:
Please visit the event website (http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/webinars/onixpl/) for more information and to register.

This is the third webinar in the series on Demystifying Standards. The slides and Q&A from the introductory webinar are available online (http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/webinars/alcts08/) for those who wish to review them.

The second webinar, OpenURL: Link Resolution That Users Will Love (http://www.niso.org/news/events/2008/webinars/openurl/), will be held August 21, 2008 from 1:00 - 2:30 p.m. (eastern time); registration is open until noon on August 21.

A webinar on SUSHI will be held October 2.

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