NISO Publishes Special E-book Issue of Information Standards Quarterly
Contributing authors offer a wide variety of perspectives across the library and publishing community
July 7, 2011, Baltimore, MD - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of the Spring 2011 issue of the Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) magazine with a special issue theme of Views of the E-book Renaissance. ISQ Guest Content Editor, October Ivins of Ivins eContent Solutions has pulled together a broad range of perspectives on what is happening today with e-books and particularly with e-book standards. As she states in her introductory letter: "Our goal for this issue of ISQ is to present an overview of the status of e-books from multiple perspectives-publishers and other content producers, librarians, and the many vendors who support their creation, management, sales, and distribution. Not coincidentally, it also illustrates the scope of the NISO community."
In the first feature article, Bill Kasdorf (Apex Content Solutions) provides an update on EPUB 3, the new generation of the EPUB specification just issued by the IDPF, and likens it to opening a Pandora's box, but where "all the creatures bursting out can be made to behave in a civilized way." This is followed with answers by Marlie Wasserman (Rutgers University Press) to 10 questions on the state of e-book publishing for university presses.
Mollie M. Pharo and Marcia Learned Au describe the public library experience with e-books from their perspective over the last decade at the Evansville Vanderburgh Public Library. Wendy Allen Sherburne (University of Illinois) provides an opinion piece on drinking the e-book Kool-aid in an academic library setting.
Mark Bide (EDItEUR) has written a standards spotlight feature where he discusses the challenge for standards in the e-book supply chain. Michael Gorrel (EBSCO Publishing) provides the member spotlight where he shares his company's plans for merging the recently acquired NetLibrary e-books with the EBSCOhost platform.
In NISO reports, Matt Garrish and Markus Gylling (DAISY Consortium) reveal the evolution of accessible publishing that occurred with the revision of the Z39.86 DAISY standard. The issue concludes with Noteworthy news items such as JSTOR's foray into e-books, ProQuest's acquisition of Ebrary, the Project Muse and UPeC partnership to offer e-books, the trial use issuance of the Journal Article Tag Suite standard (Z39.96).
"This special issue of ISQ emphasizes the growing importance of e-books throughout the library publishing and related information systems and services communities," states Todd Carpenter, NISO Managing Director. "While NISO is already engaged in e-books in a number of areas, we've announced in the issue the formation of a Special Interest Group on E-books, which will be exploring the larger context in which e-book related events are unfolding, facilitating cross-community dialogue and recommending areas where NISO can foster standards or recommended practices."
ISQ is available in open access in electronic format on the NISO website. Both the entire issue and individual articles may be freely downloaded. Print copies are available by subscription, to NISO members who opt-in, and in print on demand. For more information and to access the free electronic version, visit: www.niso.org/publications/isq.
About Information Standards Quarterly
Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ) is NISO's print and electronic magazine for communicating standards-based technology and best practices in library, publishing, and information technology, particularly where these three areas overlap. ISQ reports on the progress of active developments and also on implementations, case studies, and best practices that show potentially replicable efforts.
About NISO
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org. For more information please contact NISO at (301) 654-2512 or via e-mail at nisohq@niso.org.