Noteworthy

NISO Publishes Three Recommended Practices on Knowledge Bases, Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs, and Library Discovery Services

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published two new and one revised Recommended Practices.

The revision is to the Knowledge Base and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2014). The original recommended practice, issued in 2010, provided all parties in the information supply chain with straightforward guidance about metadata formatting— focused mainly on journal resources—to ensure the exchange of accurate metadata between content providers and knowledge base developers. Building on the initial recommendations, the revision includes the more granular, complex issues that cause problems in metadata supply, including consortia-specific metadata and metadata transfer for open access publications, e-books, and conference proceedings.

A new recommended practice, Demand Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs (NISO RP-20-2014) discusses the DDA method—also referred to as patron-driven acquisition—used by libraries for collection development where monographs are purchased at their point of need when selected by users from a pool of potential titles. NISO’s Recommended Practice discusses and makes recommendations for publishers, vendors, aggregators, and libraries about key aspects of DDA, goals and objectives of a DDA program, choosing parameters of the program, profiling options, managing MARC records for DDA, removing materials from the consideration pool, assessment of the program, providing long-term access to un-owned content, consortial considerations for DDA, and public library DDA. Although DDA is more commonly used for e-books, the method can also be applied to print publications and these recommendations provide a single set of best practices for both formats, with articulation of differences where they occur.

The second new recommended practice is Open Discovery Initiative: Promoting Transparency in Discovery (NISO RP-19-2014), which provides specific guidelines on participation in the new generation of library discovery services. The goal of the NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) was to develop recommendations that would increase transparency across all aspects of indexed discovery that use an aggregated central index to enable searching across a wide range of library related resources. The Recommended Practice includes guidelines to content providers on disclosure of level of participation, the minimum set of metadata elements provided for indexing, linking practices, and technical formats. Recommendations for discovery service providers address content listings, linking practices, file formats and methods of transfer to be supported, and usage statistics. The document also provides background information on the evolution of discovery and delivery technology and a standard set of terminology and definitions for this technology area.

KBART Recommended Practice available at: www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart

Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs Recommended Practice available at: www.niso.org/workrooms/dda/

Open Discovery Initiative Recommended Practice available at: www.niso.org/workrooms/odi/

NISO and OAI Publish American National Standard on ResourceSync Framework Specification

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) have published the ResourceSync Framework Specification (ANSI/NISO Z39.99- 2014)—a new American National Standard for the Web detailing various capabilities that a server can implement to allow third-party systems to remain synchronized with its evolving resources. The ResourceSync joint project, funded with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Jisc, was initiated to develop a new open standard on the real-time synchronization of web resources.

Increasingly, large-scale digital collections are available from multiple hosting locations, are cached at multiple servers,and leveraged by several services. Since Web resources are continually changing, this proliferation of content yields the challenging problem of keeping services that leverage a server's evolving content synchronized in a timely and accurate manner.

The ResourceSync specification introduces a range of easy to implement capabilities that a server may support to enable remote systems to remain more tightly in step with its evolving resources. It also describes how a server can advertise the capabilities it supports. Remote systems can inspect this information to determine how best to remain aligned with the evolving data. All capabilities are implemented on the basis of the document formats introduced by the Sitemap protocol. Capabilities can be combined to achieve varying levels of functionality and hence meet different local or community requirements. As a modular specification grounded in protocols that are already widely adopted, ResourceSync can be used to meet a wide variety
of use cases.

The ResourceSync specification and video tutorials on using the standard are available on the NISO website at www.niso.org/workrooms/resourcesync/.

EPUB 3.0.1 Issued by International Digital Publishing Forum

The International Digital Publishing Forum members have approved the updated version 3.0.1 of the EPUB standard as a final Recommended Specification. EPUB 3.0.1 is a minor revision, focusing primarily on bug fixes and errata for the 3.0 specification, together with several minor backwards- compatible additions.

Included among the changes is the unbinding of the EPUB Structural Semantics Vocabulary updating from the EPUB specifications revision cycle. The EPUB Working Group can now vet new property requests and make additions on an ongoing basis. Many new additions were also made to the vocabulary, most notably a new section dedicated to educational properties.

The EPUBCheck validation tool is expected to include complete support for EPUB 3.0.1 by August of this year, in conjunction with which samples for the new features of 3.0.1 are being developed. The EPUB Reading System Test Suite will be updated to include tests for 3.0.1 during the same timeframe. And the Readium open source implementation of EPUB rendering already supports several EPUB 3.0.1 features and expects to deliver full support during this year.

Announcement of EPUB 3.0.1: idpf.org/news/epub-301-approved-as-final-recommended-specification

EPUB 3.0.1 specification: www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/epub-overview.html

Summary of changes from version 3.0: www.idpf.org/epub/301/spec/epub-changes.html

UKSG Transfer Working Group Announces Improvements to the Code of Practice with Release of Version 3.0

The UKSG Transfer Working Group announced the release of the Transfer Code of Practice Version 3.0. The new version has a number of key updates dealing with new content types, clarification of subscriber types, journal URLs and redirects, nomenclature, and the timing and content of communications. Over a period of 18 months the Transfer Working Group revised and improved upon the previous version of the Code (released in September 2008) and sought feedback from the community through a public review process. Publishers will now be encouraged to follow the new version. Those publishers who endorse Transfer’s principles by agreeing to align their procedures with the Code, and to apply them in practice, will be considered ‘Transfer Compliant'.

The Transfer Code of Practice is a set of voluntary guidelines for publishers involved in any journal transfer. It covers difficult issues including ongoing provision of access to online content, exchange of subscriber lists, DOI and URL transfer, as well as perpetual access rights to journal content. Transfer and the Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service were developed in response to the expressed needs of the scholarly journal community for consistent guidelines to help publishers ensure that journal content remains easily accessible by librarians and readers when there is a transfer between parties, and to ensure that the transfer process occurs with minimum disruption.

UKSG Transfer Code of Practice: www.uksg.org/transfer

Library of Congress Identifies Recommended Formats for Long-Term Preservation

The Library of Congress released a set of recommended formats for a broad spectrum of creative works, ranging from books to digital music, to inform the Library’s acquisition practices. The format recommendations will help ensure the Library’s collections processes are considering and maximizing the long-term preservation potential of its large and varied collections.

Six categories of creative output are addressed:

» Textual Works and Musical Compositions – including print, digital, electronic serials, and score-based representations

» Still Image Works – including print and digital photographs, print and digital other graphic images, and microforms

» Audio Works – including digital or analog audio on tangible medium and digital audio that is media independent

» Moving Image Works – including digital and physical media motion pictures and file-based and physical media video

» Software and Electronic Gaming and Learning » Datasets/Databases

The recommendations will enable the Library to identify the preferred format for acquisition when a work is offered in more than one format, but will not result in the exclusion of other formats from consideration for the Library’s permanent collections. In addition to informing internal processes, the Library is also making the recommended formats public to inform the creative and library communities of best practices for ensuring the preservation of and long-term access to creative output.

LC Recommended Format Specifications 2014-2015: www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/TOC.html