NISO at ALA

Todd Carpenter updated attendees at a Sunday, June 26 meeting, on NISO's changes over the past year. Included in the news was the hiring of two new staff members, Jill O'Neill and Henrietta Verma. NISO has also gained new publisher, vendor, and library members, said Carpenter, providing welcome financial and volunteer support. The organization has begun five new projects over the past year, and, as always, is tending to ongoing projects and standards-maintenance work as well. Several presenters then gave overviews of the progress of some existing projects.

ODI, the Open Discovery Initiative
Elise Sassone, Manager, Discovery & Discovery Services at Springer Nature, discussed the Open Discovery Initiative, which was launched at ALA in 2011 in response to the then burgeoning number of library discovery service solutions. At the time, agreements between content and service providers, said Sassone, were opaque and ad hoc. The goal of the working group, therefore, was to promote transparency, by defining, for example, which usage statistics should be collected. The ODI group published a recommended practice that discussed fair linking and other usage matters. The work wasn't done once the document was published, though, and a standing committee now works to educate others on the recommended practice.

KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools)
Marlene van Ballegooie, Metadata Librarian at the University of Toronto libraries, described the NISO project she is involved with, which aims to improve the supply of metadata from content providers to knowledge bases. KBART has already completed its first and second phases, which focused on serials (phase 1) and e-books, conference proceedings, and consortial holdings (phase 2). The work was transferred to a standing committee, which manages the endorsement process, in 2014. Current priorities are outreach to content providers, re-endorsement of providers for phase 2, the development of materials to make KBART easier to implement, and related education for content providers. An enhancement to the standard is currently being considered by NISO voting members; see "New Specs and Standards," above, for further details.

NISO Bibliographic Roadmap
Diane Hillmann, partner in Metadata Management Associates, explained that NISO began exploring issues around vocabularies in 2013, and that a new work-item proposal for three interconnected vocabulary-development projects was proposed in 2014. The NISO Bibliographic Roadmap project examines vocabulary policies and practices on use and reuse, vocabulary documentation at all levels, and vocabulary preservation requirements. The group is looking at both policy and social considerations, and there is now talk, said Hillmann, of vocabulary extension, which is exciting to the field. An early of the working group's recommendations should be available as a draft for review by fall 2016, with a final document published by the end of the year.

NISO Link Origin Tracking
Nettie Lagace outlined NISO's Link Origin Tracking project, explaining that the first quarter of 2016 saw the approval of a work item: how to determine where incoming links originate when they pass through a link resolver. The working group that was formed around this task will investigate options to allow content providers and libraries to determine the original source of a link that is clicked on by a patron. A recommended practice is expected to be available by the end of 2017.