LITA Blog

NISO has released a number of announcements about standards of particular interest to librarians, which have been forwarded to us by Cindy Hepfer, the ALA Voting Representative to NISO. In order to avoid a lot of repetition of instructions, I will include them all in this post, with enough information to pique your interest (I hope) in looking closer at them and perhaps commenting. Because these are NISO standards, you will be able to view and download them directly, rather than having to request them through Cindy. In accordance with NISO procedures, all review ballots are accompanied by a recommendation from the responsible leadership committee. The first four standards are recommended for reaffirmation by NISO’s Content and Collection Management Topic Committee (Disclosure: I’m a member of that Committee). The last standard is recommended for reaffirmation by NISO’s Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee. When either committee has included some contextual information…

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…

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…

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…

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…