Working Group Connection
Business Information Topic Committee
Co-chairs: Anne Campbell (EBSCO Information Systems), Christine Stamison (Northeast Research Libraries Consortium)
Altmetrics Working Groups
NISO Altmetrics Initiative web page
Altmetrics New Work Item Proposal
Three Altmetrics Working Groups have been working since last year on documents describing assorted areas of the landscape in alternative assessment metrics. The groups' general work is described below. NISO expects that the documents will be published in final form in June, 2016.
- Working Group A is addressing development of specific definitions for alternative assessment metrics and descriptions of how various use cases apply to and are valuable to different stakeholder groups; it is co-chaired by Michael Habib, formerly of Elsevier and now independent, and Robin Chin Roemer of the University of Washington. The draft descriptions and use cases document was available for public comment from March 22-April 20.
- Working Group B is addressing definitions for appropriate metrics and calculation methodologies for specific output types (including, for example, research data, software, and performances), and promotion and facilitation of persistent identifiers in scholarly communications to aid this effort; it is co-chaired by Kristi Holmes of Northwestern University and Mike Taylor of Elsevier. It is also communicating with other efforts in this area, such as the CASRAI data dictionary, BioCADDIE, and Project COUNTER. Its documents will be available for public comment during May.
- Working Group C is addressing development of strategies to improve data quality through source data providers; it is co-chaired by Stefanie Haustein of the University of Montreal and Greg Tananbaum of SPARC. This group is forming recommendations to be distributed to providers through a Code of Conduct document -- which was available for public comment from February 25 until March 31-- and is discussing strategy for general uptake and endorsements.
Martin Fenner of DataCite serves as project consultant. A Steering Committee consisting of the co-chairs of the working groups; Martin; Todd Carpenter and Nettie Lagace of NISO; and Stuart Maxwell, representing the Business Information Topic Committee meets regularly to enhance coordination and communication among the groups.
These working groups enact Phase II of the NISO Altmetrics Initiative, which was begun in 2013 with funding from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. This development of recommended practices follows on the publication of an industry white paper distilling community discussions on what areas of alternative metrics would benefit most from standards-related development.
Nettie Lagace, Associate Director for Programs at NISO, presented on this initiative at ER&L held in Austin, TX in early April.
Demand Driven Acquisitions Working Group
Co-chairs: Barbara Kawecki (YBP Library Services); Michael Levine-Clark (University of Denver)
Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs Recommended Practice (NISO RP-20-2014)
The Demand Driven Acquisition of Monographs Recommended Practice, published by NISO in late June 2014, includes recommendations covering overall goals and objectives for a library's DDA program. Descriptions of processes include best practices for profiling, management of MARC records (methods for automated updating and removal of discovery records), mechanisms for local program assessment, and some additional considerations for consortia and public libraries. In addition to the Recommended Practice, the DDA Working Group published a summary of surveys it conducted as part of its research on areas of technical processes, access methods, and metric modeling. This survey data is extremely comprehensive and contains a wealth of qualitative information representing library perspectives and experiences in this area, useful to anyone studying this area of growth.
There have been informal discussions about a possible update to the Recommended Practice, now that nearly two years have passed since it was published and DDA has become an essential part of the library collections and use landscape. Such a project may begin later in 2016, subject to discussion and approval of the Business Information Topic Committee.
PIE-J (Presentation & Identification of E-Journals) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Ed Cilurso (Taylor & Francis), Sarah (Sally) Glasser (Hofstra University)
PIE-J Recommended Practice (NISO RP-16-2013)
The PIE-J Recommended Practice, PIE-J: Presentation & Identification of E-Journals (NISO RP-16-2013) was published in 2013. It provides guidance to publishers and platform providers on the presentation of e-journals--a critical component of the global scholarly infrastructure--particularly in the areas of title presentation, accurate use of ISSN, and citation practices. The PIE-J Recommended Practice is intended to alleviate the problems encountered by end users who attempt to access article-based materials online using citation elements. Two forms of a brochure describing PIE-J are also available via the PIE-J Workroom page.
The PIE-J Standing Committee is charged with responding to specific questions about the Recommended Practice, gathering comments for a full review of the Recommended Practice document, and promoting PIE-J. As part of this work, the Standing Committee has made available a template on the PIE-J website for librarians wishing to contact publishers and providers with concerns about the presentation of e-journals on their websites. The template includes suggested wording but is completely customizable.
The Standing Committee recently presented its 24-month report to the Business Information Topic Committee for approval and renewal of its charge. (The document and renewal were approved!) This report includes a summary of the work done to promote PIE-J, including conducting a survey of the community, which will help to drive further communication strategies.
Sally Glasser and Ed Cilurso, co-chairs of the PIE-J Standing Committee, discussed the work of the group on the April NISO Open Teleconference.
SERU (Shared E-Resource Understanding) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Adam Chesler (American Institute of Physics), Anne McKee (Greater Western Library Alliance)
SERU Recommended Practice (NISO RP-7-2012)
The SERU Recommended Practice was updated in 2012 to be more flexible for use with online products beyond e-journals, and is supported by its Standing Committee who works to publicize SERU and educate libraries and publishers via direct contacts and public presentations at industry conferences. The SERU public workroom pages are available to help publishers and libraries understand and use the SERU material. The SERU Registry, whose purpose is to enable publishers and librarians to more easily identify each other, continues to be updated with new supporters of SERU; since January, 5 new publishers and 6 new libraries have been added.
SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: James Van Mil (University of Cincinnati), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
SUSHI standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014)
COUNTER-SUSHI Implementation Profile (NISO RP-14-2012)
This Standing Committee provides maintenance and support for ANSI/NISO Z39.93, The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol, and acts as the maintenance group for the COUNTER schema by providing recommendations to COUNTER and making changes to the COUNTER XML schemas (as approved by COUNTER). The recent activities of the Standing Committee have included making relevant changes to the SUSHI schema in light of the release of COUNTER 4 and making applicable updates to the SUSHI workroom pages. The group works under a continuous maintenance procedure, which enables it to more smoothly shuttle through further updates to the standard. As COUNTER is discussing the makeup of its future release of Code of Practice 5, the SUSHI Standing Committee has started to consider the impact on its material.
The SUSHI schemas, COUNTER schemas, and sample reports are continually updated on the SUSHI web pages. The SUSHI Server Registry now lists only providers who support COUNTER Code of Practice Release 4. The Standing Committee is also working to ensure that SUSHI support materials are congruent with the new community web site, USUS and is discussing a move of the Server Registry in 2016, to be managed by COUNTER on its web site together with other compliance information.
SUSHI-Lite Working Group
Co-chairs: Paul Needham (Cranfield University), Oliver Pesch (EBSCO Information Services)
SUSHI-Lite Workroom
NISO is now preparing for publication the draft NISO Technical Report from the SUSHI-Lite Working Group which explores the potential adaptation of the SUSHI Standard to accommodate present day development tools and usage needs related to retrieving 'snippets' of usage through web services. Three objectives of the technical report (described in the original SUSHI Lite Work Item) are to:
- Allow smaller units of usage ("snippets") to be retrieved with SUSHI to enable SUSHI to become the standard for implementing real-time retrieval of usage for single journals or articles, as is becoming the practice within e-resource workflows and systems offering alternative metric displays.
- Allow for an optional implementation of SUSHI with the web services that would be accessing SUSHI snippets--specifically, a RESTful HTTP interface with COUNTER usage data returned in JSON format.
- Introduce a generalized filter specification that can be used with the new RESTful/JSON approach. These filters would allow the client to refine the request to a single book, journal, or article, or to specify extended data like account or customer details that are currently not available in the current standard.
Demonstration sites and code examples provided by Working Group members will soon be available via the SUSHI-Lite web pages to enable users to create more localized programs to experiment with the report's ideas.
Transfer Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Alison Mitchell (Nature Publishing Group), Elizabeth Winter (Georgia Institute of Technology)
Transfer Recommended Practice (NISO RP-24-2015)
The aim of the Transfer initiative, begun by the United Kingdom Serials Group (UKSG) in 2006, is to support smooth and uninterrupted access to content by librarians and readers when a journal changes ownership and online content is transferred from a transferring publisher to a receiving publisher. UKSG announced the availability of the updated Transfer Code of Practice, Version 3.0, in March 2014. During late 2014 and early 2015, Transfer successfully moved from UKSG to NISO and the UKSG document was republished as a NISO Recommended Practice in January 2015. Further support, education, and potential future revisions to Transfer are now managed by the NISO Standing Committee which discusses promotion and communication strategies for all audience on regular conference calls.
The Transfer Code of Practice provides 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. The Code contains best practice guidelines for both the Transferring Publisher and the Receiving Publisher. Publishers are asked to endorse the Code, and to abide by its principles wherever it is commercially reasonable to do so.
Transfer-compliant publishers are listed on the Publisher Endorsement web page. An alerting service is also available at the Enhanced Transfer Alerting Service; this tool gives advance notification to libraries and third parties, such as subscription agents, regarding journals that are moving. Publishers are not required to sign up to the Code, and there is no sanction if a publisher does not; but it is hoped that as the Code of Practice delineates an industry-standard best practice, statements of Transfer compliance provide a common understanding between publishers on the tasks associated with journal transfer and thus support an efficient handover, clearly beneficial to any business transaction.
Transfer Standing Committee members Jennifer Bazeley of Miami University and Nancy Beals of Wayne State University spoke about Transfer at ER&L in Austin, TXin early April. The Transfer Standing Committee will also be presenting a free NISO webinar targetted to librarians on May 20!
Z39.7 Data Dictionary Standing Committee
Chair: Martha Kyrillidou, Association of Research Libraries (ARL)
The Information Services and Use: Metrics & statistics for libraries and information providers - Data Dictionary (ANSI/NISO Z39.7) is a continuously maintained standard; the fifth edition was released in summer 2013. The purpose of the Data Dictionary is to assist the information community by indicating and defining useful quantifiable information to measure the resources and performance of libraries and to provide a body of valid and comparable data on American libraries. It identifies standard definitions, methods, and practices relevant to library statistics activities in the United States. Any user of the online standard may submit suggested changes. The Standing Committee then reviews these suggestions during its scheduled monthly phone calls.
As part of its work, the Standing Committee scans and reviews the statistical survey landscape and examines other assessment efforts-including use of particular vocabularies-in the community for effects on the Data Dictionary. The Z39.7 Standing Committee is currently considering possible updates to the standard as part of its adherence to ANSI-approved Continuous Maintenance procedures (Section 4). Its survey of the assessment landscape has so far included discussion of how libraries may need to account for shared collections and for resources in institutional repositories; the PLA iniative Project Outcome (not a formalized data collection platforms as yet, but one that may offer useful information about methodologies, protocols, etc. to the library and information community); OMB's recent call for comments on the proposed revisions to IPEDS 2016 academic libraries component; and other national surveys with data elements.
For notifications about approved future revisions to the standard, subscribe to the Z39.7 notification mailing list.
Content and Collections Management Topic Committee
Co-chairs: Marti Heyman (OCLC); Betty Landesman (University of Baltimore)
Bibliographic Roadmap
NISO Bibliographic Roadmap Initiative
Bibliographic Roadmap New Work Item Proposal
This project grew out of the NISO Bibliographic Roadmap Initiative, work which intends to identify areas where agreement on standard or recommended practices would support better bibliographic data exchange. This working group met as a single bloc for several months to establish common understandings and a proposed roadmap forward, and has now split into several subgroups to address different areas of work:
- Vocabulary Use & Reuse Subgroup, co-chaired by Diane Hillmann of Metadata Management Associates and Daniel Lovins of New York University. This subgroup is determining best practices in policies where vocabularies may be repurposed by organizations who are not the owner or maintainer of the vocabulary.
- Vocabulary Documentation Subgroup, co-chaired by Sean Glover of YBP Library Services and Natalie Bulick of Indiana State University. This subgroup is examining which information about a vocabulary should be documented in order to meet community needs, and is using as input recommendations published by the Linked Open Vocabularies (LOV) project.
- Vocabulary Preservation Subgroup, chaired by Sherle Abramson-Bluhm of the University of Michigan. This subgroup is creating recommendations regarding 'orphaned' or abandoned vocabularies and how these might be managed in the short and long term.
The subgroups are contributing use case descriptions to a shared space where all might make use of them, and starting work on a co-authored draft Recommended Practice which is hoped to be presented in early form at IFLA in Columbus and released for public comment in the autumn. A Steering Committee oversees the three working groups and ensures coordination of effort across the three areas of focus. This Steering Committee meets monthly and includes the subgroup co-chairs and a liaison to the Content and Collections Management Topic Committee, Marti Heyman of OCLC (formerly of Cengage).
NISO STS Working Groups
Co-chairs: Bruce Rosenblum (Inera), Robert Wheeler (American Society of Mechanical Engineers)
NISO STS Work Item
This work will standardize a specific tag set used for standards publishing, the ISO STS, and link it officially to JATS (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015 JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite), a widely used specification which defines a set of XML elements and attributes for tagging journal articles and describes several article models.
At the end of 2011, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) revamped its publishing systems and together with Mulberry Technologies, Inc. developed a derivative of JATS to be used for ISO standards publishing: the ISOSTS (ISO Standard Tag Set). This DTD has been in full production since, with little or no changes. Several US-based and international standards development organizations (SDOs) and distributors in the United States hope to upgrade their publishing systems, but have been reluctant to adopt ISOSTS as it is not currently an official standard. There is also the desire that updates from JATS filter into its "children" tag sets, such as STS.
The NISO STS Working Group actually consists of two groups consisting of many various SDOs, publishing technology suppliers, and other stakeholders, both co-chaired by Bruce Rosenblum of Inera and Robert Wheeler of ASME, with Mulberry Technologies serving as Secretariat. The NISO STS Steering Group is examining overall scope of the effort and setting priorities for development, and the NISO STS Technical Group is discussing how various approaches could be implemented in the tag set.
Bruce Rosenblum and Bruce Wheeler, group co-chairs, discussed the STS Working Groups on the March NISO Open Teleconference and presented the project at JATS-Con in Bethesda, MD in early April.
Protocol for Exchanging Serial Content (PESC) Working Group
Co-chairs: Leslie Johnston (National Archives and Records Administration), Kimberly Tryka (National Institute of Standards and Technology)
PESC Recommended Practice (NISO RP-23-2015)
The PESC Recommended Practice was published in June 2015. This NISO publication describes a packaging specification to be used for exchange and archiving of serial publications. Many different organizations, such as libraries, archives, indexing services, content aggregators, publishers, and content creators exchange and work with the diverse digital files that comprise serial content. There are many reasons for copies of serial content to be transferred from organization to organization, and even within a single organization, many times during the lifecycle of the content. When exchanging content, the files that comprise a serial "publication" are packaged together in some manner and these packages can be highly variable.
The PESC Recommended Practice offers guidance to members of the scholarly communication community on preferred practices for the packaging and exchange of serial content that will enable the automation of processes to receive and manage serial content at scale. By following these practices, organizations can make it clear what content has been transmitted, how it is organized, and what processing is required when a new package is received.
Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Jeff Beck (National Center for Biotechnology Information, U.S. National Library of Medicine), B. Tommie Usdin (Mulberry Technologies, Inc.)
JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015)
NISO announced the formal publication of the updated version of JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite 1.1, ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015 in early January 2016. This newly official edition is a revision of ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012, also known as JATS 1.0, first published in July 2012. The purpose of JATS is to define a suite of XML elements and attributes that describes the content of metadata and journal articles using a common format that enables the exchange of journal content. This Tag Suite thus is intended to preserve intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which the content was originally delivered, and enables an archive to capture structural and semantic components of existing material. In addition, the JATS standard includes three implementations of the suite, called Tag Sets, which are intended to provide models for archiving, publishing, and authoring journal article content.
Approved comments from users made on JATS 1.0 through February 2015 were incorporated into JATS 1.1 by the NISO JATS Standing Committee. All changes are also backward compatible with JATS 1.0, which means that any document that was valid according to JATS 1.0 will be valid according to JATS 1.1. The Standing Committee invites further comments to be considered for future updates of JATS which will be considered using its Continuous Maintenance procedure.
JATS-Con 2016 took place in early April in Bethesda, MD, and naturally included many presentations discussing various aspects of JATS and its use.
Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee
Co-chairs: Pascal Calarco (University of Windsor); Peter Murray (The Cherry Hill Company)
Access and License Indicators Working Group
Co-chairs: Ed Pentz (Crossref), Cameron Neylon (Curtin University; formerly of PLOS), Greg Tananbaum (SPARC)
Access and License Indicators Workroom
Access and License Indicators Recommended Practice (NISO RP-22-2015)
The Access and License Indicators Working Group, initially known as the Open Access Metadata and Indicators Working Group, published its Recommended Practice in early 2015. This document defines a structure for standardized bibliographic metadata to describe the accessibility of journal articles as well as describes how "open" the item is via tagging to link to the item's license terms. The Recommended Practice is meant to provide a solution to the problem where many offerings are available from publishers under the banner of Open Access (OA), Increased Access, Public Access, or other descriptions, and the terms offered vary between publishers and, in some cases, based on the funding organization of the author. A number of publishers also offer hybrid options in which some articles are "open" while the rest of the journal's content is available only by subscription or license, and no standardized bibliographic metadata currently provides information on whether a specific article is freely readable and what re-use rights might be available to readers.
Along with the published Recommended Practice, the ALI schema is available along with code samples illustrating several of the use cases documented in a Recommended Practice appendix. Also, support for JATS has been included in the latest publication of ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2015, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite 1.1.
Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs, presented on this work at ER&L in Austin, TX, in early April.
Creation of a Standing Committee to manage education, promotion, and further adjudication of potential updates to the Recommended Practice is now under way. If you are interested in potential participation in this group, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org). To follow the work of this group, subscribe to the OA Indicators mailing list.
Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (KBART) Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Magaly Bascones (JISC), Ben Johnson (ProQuest)
Contact KBART Chairs for endorsement approval
Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-9-2014)
The KBART Recommended Practice, published in 2014 by NISO, builds on the recommendations of the first version of the recommended practice to specifically address areas of metadata for e-books and conference proceedings, packages licensed via consortia deals, and describe how open access metadata might be published and shared in knowledge bases while continuing to supply a format for general transfer of journal data to the knowledge base of a link resolver supplier. The KBART Standing Committee provides support and education activities for KBART and is working now on streamlining publisher approval for inclusion in the KBART Registry, which includes details of contacts, URLs, and instructions relating to the transfer of e-resource metadata between content providers and link resolvers. All KBART registrants are requested to update their endorsement details pursuant to the new recommendations.
The Standing Committee is also reviewing its educational materials, updating these, and seeking new opportunities to present these to potential KBART audiences. Notably, a preconference on KBART, "Deep Dive into KBART," will be presented by Standing Committee members at the NASIG Annual Conference in Albuquerque in June, following its successful "premiere" at the Charleston Conference in November.
To follow the group's activities, subscribe to the KBART interest mailing list.
NCIP (NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol) Standing Committee
Chair: Mike Dicus (Ex Libris)
ANSI/NISO Z39.83-1-2012 (version 2.02), NISO Circulation Interchange - Part 1: Protocol (NCIP)
The NCIP Standing Committee operates via Continuous Maintenance procedures to manage the latest NCIP standard, version 2.02, which was published in 2012. Each month the committee holds conference calls to reviews status of implementations and discuss other general business, such as additions to the NCIP website. Meetings have been held in person at least once a year in order to review any ongoing updates to the NCIP protocol per the Standing Committee's continuous maintenance procedure and to discuss other related issues of interest to the members of the Standing Committee.
The Standing Committee is currently evaluating whether it should recommend that the standard published in 2012 should be reaffirmed or revised by NISO Voting Members, per ANSI requirements for standards under continuous maintenance.
Open Discovery Initiative Standing Committee
Co-chairs: Rachel Kessler (Ex Libris), Laura Morse (Harvard University)
ODI Recommended Practice (NISO RP-19-2014)
The Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Recommended Practice, published in June 2014, is directed toward the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search. The published document includes background on the discovery landscape, recommendations in the areas of technical formats for data format and data transfer; communication of libraries' rights regarding specific content; descriptors regarding particular levels of indexing for content; definition of fair linking to published content; and determination of appropriate usage statistics to be collected to address stakeholder needs. The ODI Standing Committee supports and publicizes ODI, and monitors the discovery landscape to determine whether and when further recommendations should be studied and written.
The ODI Standing Committee is working to further publicize and communicate vendor conformance statements and other general ODI issues and metrics and has published a brochure describing these. Further initiatives include outreach to A&I vendors; creating additional tools for librarians; outreach to discovery service providers; and following up on outcomes from the NISO October forum around the Future of Library Resource Discovery (which itself was an outcome of the NISO white paper, The Future of Library Resource Discovery). The Standing Committee has added new "librarian talking points" to its website, to help increase vendor conformance.
The ODI Standing Committee posts periodic updates on its work to the ODI observer mailing list; any interested observer may join this list. A Twitter account, @NISO_ODI can also be followed.
Laura Morse, co-chair of the ODI Standing Committee, spoke about the group's work on the February NISO Open Teleconference. Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director for Programs, presented at ER&L in early April. Scott Bernier and Julie Zhu, Standing Committee members, also included ODI in their presentation at ER&L.
The Standing Committee is planning a presentation for Monday morning, June 27, at ALA Annual in Orlando, sponsored by ALCTS. Look for it in the ALA Scheduler!
ResourceSync Working Group
Co-chairs: Todd Carpenter (NISO), Herbert Van de Sompel (Los Alamos National Laboratory)
ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2014, ResourceSync Framework Specification
ResourceSync, a specification which describes a synchronization framework for the web consisting of various capabilities that allow third party systems to remain synchronized with a server's evolving resources, was formally approved by ANSI and published in May 2014 as ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2014. The core ResourceSync group was funded by the Sloan Foundation and was augmented by other industry and research participants, some of whom were sponsored by JISC.
The problem that ResourceSync was designed to solve spans the areas of search, discovery, deposit, metadata harvesting, and transfer; there is a need to keep collections of resources in sync so that additions, updates, and deletions of one are reflected in the other. The ResourceSync standard was written in such a way that individual capabilities could be combined to meet local requirements. A server may also describe synchronization capabilities that it supports and means through which third party systems may discover this support. The core functionality of the specification is intended to represent a functional replacement of OAI-PMH. (Other features, such as push notification and archive capabilities are in beta draft form through separate documents, not currently part of the material part of NISO/ANSI standardization.)
A quick overview of ResourceSync, via YouTube, is available at http://youtu.be/ASQ4jMYytsA and also via the group's NISO webpage.
Recently those responsible for ResourceSync announced --via the ResourceSync Google Group-- the desire to update the standard to address an issue regarding communication of dates for change notification versus those stored for latest modification. NISO staff will be working with the working group and the NISO voting membership to steer these changes through the ANSI/NISO approval process and publication. Interested parties are welcome to submit their feedback as described in the recent message.
Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) Working Group
Co-chairs: John Bodfish (OCLC), Ted Koppel (Auto-Graphics)
Introduced by 3M in 1993, the Standard Interchange Protocol (SIP) provides a standard communication mechanism that allows Integrated Library System (ILS) applications and self-service devices to communicate seamlessly to perform self-service transactions. It has become the de facto standard around the world to integrate ILSs and self-service devices. This NISO Working Group has been directing the existing SIP version 3.0 specification through the NISO standardization process.
Four important high-level areas have guided the group's work: the SIP3 documents themselves, including revisions/corrections/additions, resolving ambiguities, etc.; the Maintenance Agency; SIP3's relation to privacy standards and security; and the relation to NCIP. The group met approximately bi-weekly during 2013 to work through these areas; much of the discussion concerned the extensive research and analysis that was done by Working Group members to help progress decision-making. There have been some delays unrelated to the specification itself, but NISO staff and the Working Group are continuing the final work to determine the changes and edits that need to be made to the proposed standard and associated documents pursuant to the group decisions from these meetings, in order to publish a Draft Standard for Trial Use.
Following the completion of the documents, the Working Group intends to address questions of compliance, certification, and assured interoperability. Updated materials in conjunction with the group's work will be added to its Workroom page as they are finalized.
Tracking Link Origins in Networked Information Environments
Tracking Link Origins New Work Item Proposal
This project, approved by NISO Voting Members earlier this year, aims to develop a NISO Recommended Practice to help libraries, publishers, and other content providers to accurately track the sites/platforms from which incoming links originate when they pass through a link resolver. Where content hosts utilize HTTP analysis to determine where users started research, links coming from link resolvers will represent the domain of the link resolver and not that of the platform where the user originated his/her search.
The Working Group --now forming and expected to be formally approved by the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee as part of its May meeting-- will investigate options for passing the link origin information to publishers and implement one or more proof-of-concept projects to demonstrate proposed techniques.
New Work Items
Revisions of ANSI/NISO Z39.18, Z39.19, Z39.29, regarding Scientific and Technical Reports; Controlled Vocabularies; and Bibliographic References
ANSI/NISO Z39.29-2005 (R2010) Bibliographic References
NISO Voting Members earlier this year voted to approve revision projects for three standards last revised in 2005 (and reaffirmed in 2010). NISO is thus soliciting working members and co-chairs to participate in one or more of these three projects. Of course, all of the standards cover different areas and the revisions will have different scopes, but in general terms the requirement for revision for all of them is necessitated by advancements in the use of digital documents and other materials.
If you are interested in potential participation in any of these groups, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org).
Revision of ANSI/NISO Z39.48 - Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives
Work is now under way to organize a working group to revise ANSI/NISO Z39.48 - Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives, an existing standard last revised in 1992, last reaffirmed in 2009. This action comes from the periodic review process outlined in the NISO Procedures document(Section 7.5). This standard establishes criteria for coated and uncoated paper that will last several hundred years without significant deterioration under normal use and storage conditions in libraries and archives. It identifies the specific properties of such paper and specifies the tests required to demonstrate these properties. If you are interested in potential participation in this group, please contact Nettie Lagace, NISO Associate Director of Programs (nlagace@niso.org). We are specifically seeking individuals with experience in paper preservation needs; paper composition, fiber, and stability; and/or paper analysis and test methods.
