Cindy Hepfer, the ALA Voting Representative to NISO, has informed us that a new ballot has been presented to NISO Voting Members. Because of the importance of this message, I’m going to quote Cindy’s message in full.
The text of this ballot is as follows:
‘Group 1: Formation of Voting Pools for CCM Standard Reaffirmations’
NISO periodically issues ballots for a number of NISO standards that are due for five-year reviews. In accordance with NISO procedures, they are offering voting members the option of joining the voting pool for five of those standards, that are under the responsibility of the Content and Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee. [Full disclosure: I’m a member of the CCM Topic Committee–Diane].This is NOT the reaffirmation ballot — the current ballot is only to form the voting pools.
ALA may choose any or all of the standards listed below. Joining the voting pool will allow ALA to vote on the standard and to provide comments. Once the voting pools have been formed, separate ballots for each standard will be issued only to those voting members who have joined the pool. If we do not join the voting pool for a particular standard, we have in essence “abstained” 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 considered by the Board for administrative withdrawal.
The five standards in this voting pool ballot and the URLs for you to view them are:
1) ANSI/NISO/ISO 12083 – 1995 (R2002), Electronic Manuscript Preparation and Markup [This is an adoption of the ISO standard.]
2)ANSI/NISO Z39.14 – 1997 (R2002), Guidelines for Abstracts
3)ANSI/NISO Z39.23 – 1997 (R2002), Standard Technical Report Number Format and Creation
4)ANSI/NISO Z39.26 – 1997 (R2002), Micropublishing Product Information
5)ANSI/NISO Z39.32 – 1996 (R2002), Information on Microfiche Headers
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The ballot to select which voting pools ALA should opt into closes Sunday, 30 November 2008. I need to vote no later than Nov. 26, so your deadline for feedback to me is Monday, Nov. 17, 2008.Because ALA is such a diverse organization with so many interests, even though some may be more relevant than others, unless I am presented a compelling case not to opt into one or more of these voting pools, I plan to opt into them all.
Cindy’s email is: HSLcindy@buffalo.edu. I’d appreciate it if any of you offering comments could copy me (metadata.maven@gmail.com) on those comments, so that I can keep track of LITA efforts in this area.
Diane I. Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator