NISO - New Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee Aims for Interoperable User Environments

Baltimore, MD - July 2, 2007 - As part of a strategic redesign of its standards-development process, the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has inaugurated a Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee to address issues regarding the finding and distribution of information by and to users, including OpenURL, Metasearch, interface design, and web services.

"The Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee will deal with the outward face of the work done within the information community," said Mike Teets, Committee Chair and Vice President, OCLC Global Product Architecture. "With the growing demands of a broadly information-literate world, the focus of standards shifts from more simple vertical standards to broadly interoperable environments. Our standards must address the needs of interoperating within, but possibly more importantly outside of, our traditional communities. The committee's primary role will be analyzing needs and setting a path toward a standards-supported, interoperable user environment."

In addition to tracking standards development nationally and internationally that is related to its topic areas, the new Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee will identify what additional work would fill gaps in the standards landscape. As part of this effort, the Committee will convene Thought Leader meetings, the initial round of which are supported by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Discovery to Delivery is one of three new Topic Committees formed as part of NISO's strategic restructuring effort. The other two committees focus on Business Information and on Collections and Content Management.

Questions related to participation in the Committee or to its scope of work should be directed to Karen Wetzel, NISO's Standards Program Manager, as kwetzel@niso.org.

About the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)

NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. 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 an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org.