Busy Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting representative to NISO, still in flood mode, has sent out another batch of standards reviews. To keep from passing this flood in its entirety onto the LITA Blog, I will again provide brief notes for each, indicating deadlines, where to get the standard for review, and any other critical information needed to spur action on behalf of LITA members.
1. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39-41-1997 (R2002), Printed Information on Spines. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, ANSI/NISO Z39-41-1997 (R2002), Printed Information on Spines. It is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-41-1997r2002/.
NISO’s Content and Collection Management (CCM) Topic Committee recommends a vote of REAFFIRM WITH TITLE AND ABSTRACT CHANGE. The CCM is recommending the following title and abstract change to better reflect the content of the standard. Such a change can be made as part of the reaffirmation and does not constitute a revision to the content of the standard.
CURRENT TITLE: Printed Information on Spines
NEW PROPOSED TITLE: Placement Guidelines for Information on Spines
CURRENT ABSTRACT: Describes how to format information on the spines of printed bindings, covers, containers, or other protective enclosures. It describes both the kinds of information to be printed on spines and the order and placement of the information.
NEW PROPOSED ABSTRACT: Describes and allocates areas on the spines of printed bindings, covers, containers, or other protective enclosures. It describes, at a high level, both the kinds of information to be printed on spines and the order and placement of the information.
Cindy’s deadline for comment is May 27, 2009.
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2. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.47-1993 (R2003), ANSEL. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.47-1993 (R2003), Extended Latin Alphabet Coded Character Set for Bibliographic Use (ANSEL). It is available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-47-1993r2003/.
NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee recommends a vote of WITHDRAW. The Topic Committee recommends this vote for the following reasons:
1. MARC records currently used by libraries are converted to the encoding standards supported by systems such as Windows and UNIX.
2. UNIMARC has already moved to full Unicode, and US MARC distributed using marcxml is also in Unicode.
3. ANSEL cannot support software developments that support language-sensitive search and retrieve, and requires programming to map ANSEL-based data to newer standards in order to be processed by computer operating system and database systems.ANSEL had an important role in making it possible for bibliographic utilities to exchange data that contained diacritics characters that were not covered by ANSI ASCII at a time when no standard existed outside of the library community. However, since then ISO and NISO have developed several standards for character encoding (e.g., ISO 8859-1 [Latin-1], ISO 8859-2, and ISO 10646 [Unicode]) that have been widely adopted and accepted by many communities, including libraries.
The Content and Collection Management Topic Committee therefore believes that the Z39.47 standard should be referenced only when there is a need to map or convert old data, something that can be done by referencing the withdrawn standard, and that it would not be in the best interests of the information community to maintain it as an active NISO/ANSI standard any longer.
If withdrawal is approved, the standard will be removed from the list of approved NISO standards. The standard will remain available as a withdrawn standard for five (5) years.)
The deadline for comments to Cindy is May 28, 2009. Cindy has indicated that if she does not hear from anyone within ALA, she will vote on behalf of ALA to withdraw: ANSI/NISO Z39.47-1993 (R2003), Extended Latin Alphabet Coded Character Set for Bibliographic Use (ANSEL).
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3. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R2002), Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives. This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (R2002), available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-48-1992r2002/.
NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee recommends a vote of REAFFIRM WITH ABSTRACT CHANGE. An additional final sentence to the abstract is proposed. The proposed abstract change is considered editorial and can be done as part of a reaffirmation; it does not constitute a revision to the standard.
CURRENT ABSTRACT: This standard establishes criteria for coated and uncoated paper that will last several hundred years without significant deterioration under normal use and storage conditions in libraries and archives. This standard identifies the specific properties of such paper and specifies the tests required to demonstrate these properties.
PROPOSED NEW ABSTRACT: This standard establishes criteria for coated and uncoated paper that will last several hundred years without significant deterioration under normal use and storage conditions in libraries and archives. This standard identifies the specific properties of such paper and specifies the tests required to demonstrate these properties. The standard does not address environmental impact issues of manufacturing.
Cindy’s deadline for comments on this ballot is May 26, 2009.
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4. Review of ANSI/NISO Z39.56-1996 (R2002), Serial Item and Contribution Identifier (SICI). This is a periodic review ballot for the published standard, available for download from: http://www.niso.org/standards/z39-56-1996r2002/.
NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee recommends a vote of REAFFIRM. If reaffirmed, the Topic Committee will be studying the standard more closely to determine if a revision might be needed for Z39.56 in the near future, particularly with regard to larger issues of identification and existing applications using SICI. You are encouraged to provide comments with your vote that might provide the Topic Committee with additional information regarding needs for a future revision. Please note that a revision can begin at any time, with the Voting Members approval, following the reaffirmation of a standard; it need not wait for the next 5-year periodic review.
Cindy’s deadline for comments on this ballot is May 22, 2009.
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5. Registration Authority for the soon to be issued revision of ISO 10957, The International Standard Music Number.
Cindy notes:
“The TC46/SC9 committee has asked the ISO Technical Management Board to approve continuation of the International ISMN Agency as the Registration Authority for the soon to be issued revision of ISO 10957, The International Standard Music Number. The ISMN Agency is located in Berlin; additional information about them can be found here: http://www.ismn-international.org/international.html. ISO is now asking the national standards bodies’ members for their approval of this recommendation. Since NISO is the Technical Advisory Group for TC46, we need to provide the U.S. vote to ANSI.â€
From NISO:
“Since SC9, for which NISO is the Secretariat, has already approved this appointment, because it is not a new appointment, and because there is a very short turn-around to respond to this matter, we are not issuing a formal ballot on this appointment. Instead we are asking any voting members who have any objection to this appointment or comments on it to notify NISO no later than close of business on Wednesday, April 29, 2009. If we do not hear from you by then, we will assume you have no objection to this appointment.â€
Cindy asks that, should any member have a problem with an ALA voting affirmatively, she needs to hear no later than Monday, April 27, 2009. NISO will assume ALA’s approval if they do not hear otherwise.
Cindy can be contacted at: HSLcindy@buffalo.edu.
That’s all for now, but keep alert for new waves of activity!
Diane Hillmann
LITA Standards Coordinator