NISO Publishes Phase III of the Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice

Baltimore, Maryland, August 26, 2026: The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to announce the publication of a revision to the Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2026), commonly known as KBART Phase III.

First published in 2010, the KBART Recommended Practice provides all parties in the information supply chain with straightforward guidance about metadata formatting to ensure the exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers. Building on the efforts of the 2014 revision (Phase II), which provided additional guidance on monographs and consortial collections, the Phase III revision offers further recommendations for additional types of content, provides file-level recommendations for KBART Automation, accommodates translated and transliterated publication titles and conventions around contributors’ surnames, overhauls the embargo section, adds provisions for a file manifest, and introduces a reworked KBART endorsement process, now known as KBART compliance.

“With this latest release, KBART becomes much more capable of handling the complexities of today’s knowledge base-related metadata while, we hope, remaining simple enough that every content provider can adopt it,” said Robert Heaton, co-chair of the KBART Standing Committee and FOLIO Consultant at EBSCO. “We are grateful to work with the dedicated members of the Standing Committee and look forward to continuing to support the enthusiastic community of KBART users.”

“Since KBART’s initial release, the Standing Committee has received valuable recommendations from the community, incorporating the latest feedback into Phase III of the Recommended Practice," added Noah Levin, fellow co-chair and Senior Manager, Metadata and Digital Asset Management at Springer Publishing. “The committee performed a complete top-to-bottom review of KBART, providing clearer examples and guidelines, provisions for multimedia products and global language support, and a new file manifest providing clear guidance for navigating content providers’ file packages. We look forward to the new guidelines serving the user community for many years to come and welcome continued feedback."

“We congratulate the co-chairs and Standing Committee members on this achievement,” said Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “We thank them for their hard work to ensure KBART truly reflects the needs of the content providers, librarians, and knowledge base suppliers who have come to rely on it for communicating holdings metadata.”

The updated KBART Recommended Practice is freely available on the NISO website: https://www.niso.org/standards-committees/kbart.