NISO Contributes to Annual Meeting of ISO Technical Committee for Information and Documentation, TC 46

The annual meeting of the International Organization for Standardization's ISO/TC 46 Information and documentation took place in Wellington, New Zealand, from May 9-13, 2016.

NISO Executive Director Todd Carpenter notes, "Some important questions were resolved at the meeting, and the groundwork for several initiatives laid out, making it a great success." He adds, "NISO owes a debt of gratitude to the outgoing chair of SC 11, David Moldrich, who has served in that role for 18 years. He has made a tremendous difference to the world of records management. NISO joins the other members of TC 46 in welcoming Judith Ellis as the incoming chair in January."

In the NISO June Open Teleconference held last month, Carpenter described some of the events and achievements of TC 46 in New Zealand.

ISO/TC 46 Information and documentation
TC 46 is the highest level committee that convened at the New Zealand meeting. Several TC-level Working Groups met, including WG 4, which is responsible for a revision of ISO 8 Presentation of periodicals. Laurie Kaplan of Proquest chairs this working group considering the inclusion in ISO 8, formerly focused on print periodicals, of recommendations for electronic journals put forward via NISO RP-16-2013, PIE-J: Presentation & Identification of E-Journals. ISO 3166, Country Codes is one of the more important standards that TC 46 oversees. TC 46 has expanded the number of participants included in WG 7, the working group responsible for this standard, and continues to seek another country to join in the work.

ISO/TC 46/SC 4 Technical interoperability
This Technical Committee's (TC) discussions focused primarily on long-term-digital-preservation resources, a concern that has become a key work area for SC 4. The subcommittee has been working for some time on standardizing the EPUB format produced by IDPF (the International Digital Publishing Forum), and has been working with ISO subcommittee ISO/TC20/SC 13 on the OAIS model and its revision.

SC 4 also has a number of active working groups, which are considering issues concerning RFID, interlibrary loan, and metadata and protocols for long term preservation. The subcommittee is undertaking a minor revision of the WARC file format standard and, working with the DCMI (Dublin Core Metadata Initiative), is considering a minor revision of the Dublin Core metadata standard, ISO 15836:2009. The revision will have two parts: Part 1 will include the current 15 core elements with minor revisions, and part 2, which is new, will focus on Dublin Core terms and classes and will bring the standard in line with the extensions work that DCMI has done.

ISO/TC 46/SC 8 Quality - Statistics and performance evaluation
Among the smallest of the subcommittees participating in TC 46, SC 8 is concerned with quality statistics and performance evaluation for libraries, publishers, and other information organizations. The group recently saw an important change in its secretariat: Deutsches Institut für Normung, or DIN, the German national standards body, resigned from this role in December 2015, and KATS, the Korean Agency for Technology and Standards, has taken over. Though SC 8 members didn't have many in-person representatives at the meeting, there were updates on the work being undertaken. ISO 18461, which covers museum statistics, was recently published, and, seeking to work on an international statistics project for archives, SC8 has completed a related committee draft in this area and anticipates a 2018 project. In the meantime, work on new key indicators for museums was approved this spring and will be published as will be published as ISO 21246. SC 8 will next meet in Germany in September.

ISO/TC 46/SC 9 Identification and description
SC 9, the group in which NISO takes a leadership role serving as its Secretariat, covers Identification and description of published content. SC 9 sponsored meetings of two working groups: one working group on ISO 20147, the International Library Item Identifier, which this weekend released a Committee Draft of its standard, and one of the working group that is revising ISO 3901, the International Standard Recording Code, whose draft is out for ballot until July (see Forthcoming ISO Ballots). Two ad hoc groups also met, one on the interoperability of identifiers, and the other on registration authorities. The former group discussed mapping the metadata associated with identifiers and trying to create linkages between the various elements.

ISO 17316:2015, Information and documentation -- International standard link identifier (ISLI) was published last year; the International Information Content Industry Association, its Registration Authority, is making great progress in its support and promotion of the standard.

ISO 2108, International Standard Book Number (ISBN): The approval ballot related to a revision of this standard closed on May 12; it passed with approval from all voters and will progress to publication.

ISO 15707 International Standard Musical Work Code (ISWC): Decisions on the revision of this standard have been delayed because not enough countries have submitted names of experts who could work on it. These member countries have been reminded of their obligation, and it is hoped that revision work will start shortly.  ISO 999: Guidelines for the content, organization and presentation of indexes and ISO 5963: Methods for examining documents, determining their subjects, and selecting indexing terms: These related standards are out of date and an ad hoc group, appointed for analysis purposes, proposed that they should be merged through a revision of ISO 999. Once the revision of ISO 999 has been published, it is proposed that ISO 5963 will be withdrawn.

ISO 3297: International standard serial number (ISSN): A minor revision of this standard, with some editorial changes, was published in April. A related ballot regarding a systematic review of the standard focusing on broader issues is currently out for voting by TC 46 members.

ISO/TC 46/SC 10 Requirements for document storage and conditions for preservation
SC 10 is focused on long-term preservation of physical materials. The group held its plenary meeting in New Zealand, and key to the session was consideration of a new project on emergency preparedness for cultural institutions.

ISO/TC 46/SC 11 Archives/records management
SC 11, perhaps the most active subcommittee within TC 46, focuses on archives and records management. The major news for SC 11 was that its chair, David Moldrich, is stepping down after 18 years of service, and a new chair, Judith Ellis, has been appointed to begin her role at the next SC 11 meeting. As part of its overall set of meetings, SC 11 held a very engaging discussion related to appraisal, systems design, and records management in the cloud. In addition, SC 11 is working on revision to ISO 16175, Principles and functional requirements for records in electronic office environments, parts 1, 2, and 3. The subcommittee is also expanding metadata to ISO 22310, Guidelines for standards drafters for stating records management requirements in standards, and looking at the vocabulary and requirements for the ISO 30300 series on managing records.

As NISO Executive Director Todd Carpenter mentioned during the teleconference on events at TC 46, several of the issues discussed at the Wellington Plenary Meeting will be balloted by NISO to the US TAG (Technical Advisory Group) in the coming months. Please contact us at nisohq@niso.org or at 301-654-2512 if you have questions or would like to be involved in this work.