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CRKN and NISO Announce Canadian Consortium Agreement

The Canadian Research Knowledge Network (CRKN) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) today announced a consortium agreement to provide NISO Library Standards Alliance (LSA) membership to all CRKN institutional members, as well as associate members participating in CRKN’s content licensing program.

The agreement starts January 1, 2021, and means that library staff in 79 Canadian higher education and research institutions will be entitled to LSA membership benefits, including: free access to NISO’s educational webinar program; unlimited participation in NISO Working Groups/Standing Committees; and discounted registration for all non-webinar events, including the annual NISO Plus conference.

As lead organization for the consortium, CRKN will continue to be a NISO Voting Member, and will provide a central point of contact between NISO and the CRKN member organizations. 

“LSA membership is a wonderful benefit for CRKN’s member institutions,” commented Clare Appavoo, Executive Director of CRKN. “It is also an opportunity for us to further our goal of collaborative advocacy to develop and improve standards that benefit our members as well as the Canadian information community as a whole. The possibilities for education and meaningful exchange across the library sector provided by NISO are exceptional, and I look forward to the increased engagement that this membership will provide.”  

“It is a pleasure to welcome the new members of CRKN to the NISO community,” said Todd A. Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “The global nature of information exchange means all types of organizations — regardless of their physical location — need to work collaboratively to support content creation, distribution, delivery, and preservation. NISO has long been engaged internationally, through ISO and through its many international members. We are excited to expand our collaboration with Canadian institutions via this partnership with CRKN.”

For more information about this announcement, please contact jfriedman@crkn.ca or nisohq@niso.org

About CRKN

For our member organizations and the diverse communities they serve, CRKN empowers researchers, educators, and society with greater access to the world’s research and Canada’s preserved documentary heritage, now and for future generations. We deliver value to academic libraries, heritage organizations, and knowledge seekers within Canada in the following ways:

  • Represent our membership in large-scale licensing and content acquisition activities

  • Collaborate to expand and enrich the digital knowledge ecosystem in Canada and the world

  • Advocate for fair and sustainable access to public research and content;

  • Support the digital infrastructure required to preserve and access critical Canadian content

  • Mobilize our membership to transform scholarly communications in Canada

About NISO

NISO, based in Baltimore, MD, USA, aims to build knowledge, foster discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of information standards, and is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO website (https://niso.org) or contact us at nisohq@niso.org.