Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s busy voting representative to NISO, has forwarded to us some additional information on upcoming voting pools. The first one, designated Group 5, invites ALA to join a number of NISO voting pools for three standards due for review. The first two standards listed are the responsibility of the Content & Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee. The third standard is the responsibility of the Business Information (BI) Topic Committee.
Joining the voting pools allows ALA to vote on the standard and provide comments once the review process has begun. Once the voting pools have been formed, separate ballots for each standard will be issued only to those who have joined the pool. If ALA does not join the pool for a particular standard, we are considered to be “abstaining” from any decision made regarding this standard’s reaffirmation ballot.
NISO needs at least 15% of the voting membership to join the pool. If less than 15% express interest in the standard, it may be referred to the NISO Board for administrative withdrawal.
The three standards in this Group 5 voting pool are:
1) ANSI/NISO Z39.9-1992 (R2001), International Standard Serial Numbering (ISSN)
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-9-1992/
2) ANSI/NISO Z39.76-1996 (R2002), Data Elements for Binding Library Materials
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-76-1996R2002/
3) ANSI/NISO Z39.20-1999, Criteria for Price Indexes for Print Library Materials
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-20-1999/
The ballot to select which voting pools ALA should opt into closes April 23. Cindy would like to have feedback from anyone who wishes to comment no later than April 16.
The second voting pool, not designated with a number, includes five additional NISO standards that are due to begin their reaffirmation reviews in 2009. The first four are the responsibility of the Content & Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee. The fifth standard is the responsibility of the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee.
The five standards in this second voting pool are:
1) ANSI/NISO Z39.18-2005, Scientific and Technical Reports – Preparation, Presentation, and Preservation
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-18-2005/
2) ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005, Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-19-2005/
3) ANSI/NISO Z39.29-2005, Bibliographic References
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-29-2005/
4) ANSI/NISO Z39.84-2005, Syntax for the Digital Object Identifier
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-84-2005/
5) ANSI/NISO Z39.88-2004, The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services
http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-88-2004/
This second ballot to select which voting pools ALA should opt into closes April 30. Cindy would like to have feedback from anyone who wishes to comment no later than April 23. Unless she is presented with a compelling case not to opt ALA into these voting pools, she plans to opt the organization into the review process for all of these standards, all of which most definitely are of interest to libraries.
Please send comments to Cindy at HSLcindy@buffalo.edu. Note that since these are NISO — not ISO — standards, you CAN review the documents in question directly at the URLs listed above.
Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator