Standards Watch

Country Codes

New announcements from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting Representative to NISO are coming along quickly, and these are, for the most part, of more general interest to libraries. The first of these is ISO 3166-1:2006, Country codes. “This part of ISO 3166 establishes codes that represent the current names of countries, dependencies, and other areas of particular geopolitical interest, on the basis of lists of country names obtained from the United Nations. It is intended for use in any application requiring the expression of current country names in coded form; it also includes basic guidelines for its implementation and maintenance.” “This standard is managed differently from other ISO standards due to the ongoing changes to or additions of country codes. The maintenance agency regularly issues a newsletter with new or changed codes. Those codes are added to the standard’s country code database and become usable when the newsletter is issued. So…

Standards Watch

Paper Standards to Ballot

The second group of standards announcements passed to us by busy Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting Representative to NISO, concern standards for paper for permanence and archival uses. 1. Systematic Review, IS0 9706:1994, Paper for documents – Requirements for permanence. “The purpose of this International Standard is to provide a means of specifying and identifying paper that, according to the present state of knowledge, has a high degree of permanence and is likely to undergo little or no change in properties that influence readability and handling when stored in a protected environment for long periods of time.” Deadline for comments to Cindy is no later than Wednesday, Feb. 17, 2010. 2. IS0 11108:1996, Archival paper – Requirements for permanence and durability. “This International Standard specifies the requirements for archival paper. It is applicable to unprinted papers intended for documents and publications required for permanent retention and frequent use. For these documents…

General information

Standard character sets and transliterations

Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s Voting Representative to NISO, has been busy pushing NISO standards announcements our way. I will be combining the announcements to save your time and LITABlog space. Instructions for requesting the relevant documents from Cindy appears at the end of this message. The first group of announcements has to do with special character sets and transliteration. 1. Systematic Review ISO 10754:1996, Extension of the Cyrillic alphabet coded character set for non-Slavic languages for bibliographic information interchange. “This is version three of the standard that specifies a set of 93 graphic characters with their coded representations. It consists of a code table and a legend showing each graphic, its use and its name. Explanatory notes are also included. The character set is primarily intended for the interchange of information among data processing systems and within message transmission systems.” The deadline for comments to Cindy is no later than Monday,…

Standards Watch

Two Upcoming ISO Ballots

Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s Voting Representative to NISO, has notified us of two new items coming up for ballot early in the New Year. The first is for ISO/DIS 27729, International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI). The ISNI “… specifies the International Standard name identifier (ISNI) for the identification of public identities of parties; that is, the identities used publicly by parties involved throughout the media content industries in the creation, production, management, and content distribution chains.” This standard could be of particular interest to those librarians interested in the future of external name files in the cataloging world and prospects for using non-library data. The second ballot is for ISO/DIS 25964-1, Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies, Part 1: Thesauri for information retrieval (Revision of ISO 2788:1986 and of ISO 5964:1985). The announcement says, in part: “This part of ISO 25964 gives recommendations for the development and maintenance of thesauri intended…

Standards Watch

DOI Standard up for ballot

Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting Representative to NISO, has brought to our attention an upcoming ballot for ISO/DIS 26324 (Digital Object Identifier System). The announcement states: “This International Standard specifies the syntax, description and resolution functional components of the digital object identifier (DOI®) system, and the general principles for the creation, registration and administration of DOI names. This standard also describes how the DOI system can be used with existing ISO identification systems, including the provision of additional functionality (such as resolution) where this is not already available.” Cindy points out that this may be our last opportunity to make substantive comments to this standard. If there is 100% approval, the standard can go directly to publication. Comments from ALA members can influence the NISO vote (ALA does not vote on ISO standards directly). Cindy is authorized to provide a draft to ALA members who wish to comment—she can be contacted…

Standards Watch

Persistent Identifiers–New standard up for ballot

A new announcement has come from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting Representative to NISO. This one is in regards to ISO/DIS 24619, Persistent identification and access in language technology applications. From the announcement: “The scope of this International Standard is to present requirements when including resolvable persistent identifiers (PID) with references to and citations of language resources in documents as well as in language resources themselves. This standard addresses issues of persistence and granularity of references to resources, by first requiring that persistent references be implemented by using a PID framework and further imposing requirements on any PID frameworks used for this purpose.” “Note that this standard makes reference to ISO 690-2 (bibliographic citations for electronic resources), which is in the process of revision and merger with 690-1. The standard at ballot also mentions its relationship to DOI, ARK, and PURL (among others). The ISO DOI System standard will be issued…

Standards Watch

Additional Announcements from NISO

We have two new announcements from Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting Representative to NISO. These too also have fairly short deadlines (though not as short as the last group, thankfully). 1. ISO/FDIS 16245, Boxes, file covers and other enclosures, made from cellulosic materials, for storage. This ballot is for the final draft standard, described thusly: “This International Standard specifies requirements for boxes and file covers, made of cellulosic material, to be used for long term storage of documents on paper or parchment. It is applicable to boxes made of solid or corrugated board and to file covers made of paper or board. It can also be applicable to other types of enclosure for long-term storage such as cases, portfolios, tubes and envelopes made of cellulosic material. It is NOT applicable to storage of photographic materials.” When commenting to Cindy keep in mind that at this final stage a “Yes” vote can…

Standards Watch

New ISO Working Group needs expertise

Cindy Hepfer, the ALA Voting Representative to NISO has passed on to us information on the establishment of a new working group, ISO/TC 46/SC 8/WG 9 “Statistics and quality issues for web archiving,” for which ISO is looking for participants. Call for experts document available from: http://www.niso.org/apps/org/workgroup/tc46sc8interest/download.php/2772/N274_Information_on_the_establishment_of_a_new.pdf Original project description and justification available from: http://www.niso.org/apps/org/workgroup/tc46ballots/members/standards/new160/manage/modify_document.php Cindy notes: “If anyone knows an ALA member who has the expertise required to serve on this project and who would be willing to put in the necessary time/effort, please send me that individual’s name and contact information to forward to NISO. This will be a terrific opportunity for the right person!” The initial meeting of the working group will be in early December, 2009. Diane I. Hillmann LITA Standards Coordinator

Standards Watch

Standards announcements–short deadlines

The following are a group of fairly short (or very short) deadline announcements from Cindy Hepfer, ALA’s Voting Representative to NISO. The fault for the delay in getting these out is mine, not hers! 1. New Work Item: ISO/WD 32000-2, Document management — Portable document format: Part 2: PDF 2.0. This is a liaison ballot from TC171/SC2 to approve a new work item and the working draft for the standard. This part of the PDF standard will add new features to ISO 32000-1 including support for geospatial data to images, support SWF navigation for collections, adds general rich media annotation type, support for barcodes, adds PRC to list of supported 3D models, adds structure elements for MathML, and enhances the accessibility. US TAG members may “recommend” a US vote and provide comments. We may also nominate an expert to participate on this project. If anyone is interested in working on…

General information

A Plethora of Standards News

Our ALA Voting Representative to NISO, Cindy Hepfer, has passed on a number of notices to LITA members, and in order to bring them quickly to your attention, I’m going to be briefer than usual. The first group is for upcoming ISO ballots: 1. Systematic Review ISO 21127:2006, a ballot for the published standard, ISO 21127:2006, Information and documentation — A reference ontology for the interchange of cultural heritage information. This is the first edition of the standard that is intended to facilitate the exchange of information between cultural heritage institutions by defining a domain ontology for cultural heritage information. (Cindy’s deadline for comments is Tuesday, Nov. 24, 2009). 2. Systematic Review ISO 12083:1994, a ballot for the published standard, ISO 12083:1994, Information and documentation — Electronic manuscript preparation and markup. This is the first edition of the International Standard that presents four document type definitions and additional facilities conforming…