Standards Watch

New NISO Groups Being Formed

As most of you have probably noted, I’ve been trying to make sure that information about standards activities coming through NISO (either NISO or ISO activities) gets onto the Standards Watch portion of the LITA Blog. The majority of these posts refer to upcoming ISO votes in which ALA has some interest as a NISO member.

The other kind of issue that comes up is the formation of new working groups to study particular issues and make standards recommendations. These are pretty important, and LITA members should be paying some attention to these, as they’ll most likely come up with recommendations that could affect our working lives.

Cindy Hepfer, who is the current ALA rep to NISO, has forwarded to us two new groups in the process of formation.

NISO will require a yea or nay from ALA on these soon, and absent objections from the membership, Cindy will vote yea. (Yes, the timing is tight, but thus is always the case around holidays, and these kinds of proposals are only available for vote for 30 days by NISO procedures.) Her deadline for comment on these is Jan. 17.

D2D-01 UKSG Knowledge Base Working Group

“This is a proposal to form a joint NISO/UKSG working group, comprising representatives from each of the parties active in the supply and use of knowledge bases, to develop guidelines for best practices to effect smoother interaction between members of the knowledge base supply chain.”

BUS-01 Institutional Identifiers

“This is a proposal to develop a standard for Institutional Identification in the publishing and library environment.”

Cindy notes: “The documentation for each of these working groups is minimal, but now that I can access them I am more than willing to forward one or both to anyone who is interested, as long as you contact me no later than noon next Wednesday (1/9). I will be at Midwinter 1/10-1/15.” Cindy can be contacted at: HSLcindy@buffalo.edu.