NISO Recommended Practice on Test Modes for SUSHI Servers Issued for Trial Use
Guidelines Will Aid in Faster Development of SUSHI Clients to Harvest Usage Statistics
Baltimore, MD, August 1, 2011 - The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the availability of the recommended practice Providing a Test Mode for SUSHI Servers (NISO RP-13-201x) for a trial use period ending January 31, 2012. The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol is a NISO standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2007) that automates the retrieval of COUNTER usage statistics by libraries. The process of developing a SUSHI client requires testing against the SUSHI servers where usage data is expected to be harvested. The new Recommended Practice describes how content providers should provide access to their SUSHI Servers in a test mode so that clients can be set up easier and faster, which is of benefit to both libraries and content providers.
"We have seen a tremendous surge in the adoption of the SUSHI standard, especially since it became a requirement for compliance with Release 3 of the COUNTER Code of Practice," states Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist for E-Resource Access and Management Services at EBSCO Information Services and Chair of the NISO SUSHI Servers Working Group. "But many SUSHI client developers have encountered difficulty in accessing content providers' servers to conduct testing of their client software. These recommendations provide guidelines to content providers on how they can easily provide test areas to prospective users of their SUSHI server without providing live, usually confidential, data or placing undue strains on their production servers."
"SUSHI is quickly becoming one of NISO's most popular standards," explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for Programs. "Libraries that are using the SUSHI protocol have seen significant time savings in gathering their usage statistics. This Recommended Practice will make it even easier for SUSHI to be adopted by reducing and eliminating development roadblocks."
The draft Recommended Practice and an online comment form are available at: www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/server/. All content providers who provide COUNTER usage statistics are encouraged to implement the recommendations during the trial and provide their feedback.
About the National Information Standards Organization (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.