Four Information Industry Leaders Voted to NISO Board of Directors

BETHESDA, MD - July 5, 2005 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) Board of Directors elections concluded with Robin Murray voted in as Vice Chair/Chair Elect and three members added -- Nancy Davenport, Lorcan Dempsey, and Bruce Rosenblum. Their term runs 3 years, beginning July 1, 2005.
Statements indicating their chief aims as Board members, as well as brief bios, follow:

Robin Murray, Vice Chair/Chair Elect

"The major opportunities for NISO's community rely on the ability to realize the value of information services. Integration is the key to this; information services must become tightly integrated into the 'front-line' systems which directly support the objectives of the parent organisation, whether these be learning outcomes, social improvement or corporate profit," said Robin Murray. "More than ever, standardization is the key to realizing these opportunities and the work of NISO is critical to this. This will involve both standardization within the library industry and integrating standards work with other related industries.

Robin Murray CEO, Fretwell-Downing Informatics, is internationally recognised as an expert in the fields of information systems architecture, information integration and digital libraries. He has served on the European Expert Group for Libraries, is a member of the NISO board, and also serves on the Advisory Board for Digital South Yorkshire.After 10 years with FDI, Robin was appointed as Managing Director and CEO in 1999. Under his leadership, the company has delivered significant product development and marketplace expansion, resulting in the successful growth of new products into new markets, worldwide.

Nancy Davenport

"While we may individually chafe at the rigor standards impose, we also rely on their integration in the products and services we use to build content-rich resources for our communities," noted Nancy Davenport. "Acceptance and implementation of standards are as fundamental to creating collaborative digital resources and their preservation, as they were to developing the MARC record."

Nancy Davenport is President of the Council on Library and Information Resources. Prior to CLIR, she held various positions at the Library of Congress including Chief, Rare Books and Special Collections Division, Senior Specialist in Library and Information Sciences, and most recently as the Director of Acquisitions from 1998-2004. With more than thirty years of experience Nancy has made contributions through membership in various organizations and publications, among them, her regular column in CLIR and Library of Congress: Heritage copy preservation in Library collections, acquisitions, & technical services (2004).

Lorcan Dempsey

"Libraries face interesting challenges as we try to become more 'webby,' and move to flatter networks of lightweight services stitched together and into user environments. This has implications for how we identify, develop and maintain standards, and how we present the library to other communities," said Lorcan Dempsey. "I am pleased to be joining the NISO Board at such a pivotal moment and look forward to bringing my experience, and the experiences of my colleagues at OCLC, to bear in the foundational work facing us."

Lorcan Dempsey, who recently served on the Blue Ribbon Panel advising the Board on strategic planning issues, is VP of Research for OCLC. He oversees the work of OCLC Research and participates in OCLC's Strategic Leadership Team. Lorcan was named OCLC Chief Strategist in March 2004. He joined OCLC in 2001 after leaving the UK, where he oversaw the information program of JISC. Before this he was Director of the UK Office for Library and Information Networking (UKOLN) at the University of Bath.

Bruce Rosenblum

"Building stronger bridges between publishers and libraries will be an area of focus for me as a member of the NISO Board," said Bruce Rosenblum. "Publishers and libraries interact on many levels that require standards because of the escalation in the digital exchange of information. This makes NISO a perfect arena to bring to the two together in a meaningful way."

Bruce Rosenblum, CEO of Inera, has spent 20 years designing and implementing electronic publishing solutions. He consults on the application of XML in publishing and the design of electronic production workflows. He co-authored the new NLM journal and archive DTDs, and the CrossRef Metadata Deposit Schema. Rosenblum leads the design and development of eXtyles, Inera's integrated suite of editorial and XML tools for Microsoft Word used in the production of more than 400 journals worldwide.

About NISO

NISO, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains, and publishes technical standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval, re-purposing, storage, metadata, and preservation. NISO Standards, information about NISO's activities and membership are featured on the NISO website http://www.niso.org.