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History/Origins

The momentum behind SUSHI began to gather in the summer of 2005, at the America Library Association annual meeting. Tim Jewell and Adam Chandler (both librarians and steering group members of the Digital Library Federation’s Electronic Resource Management Initiative), with Ted Fons (a representative of Integrated Library System vendor, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.), approached Oliver Pesch (a representative from NISO). The group had an informal meeting to talk developing an automated way to gather electronic resource usage statistics. This meeting led to the establishment of the NISO SUSHI working group in late 2005, with the following membership:

  • Adam Chandler (co-chair), Cornell
  • Oliver Pesch (co-chair), EBSCO
  • Ivy Anderson, California Digital Library
  • Patricia Brennan, Thomson Scientific
  • Ted Fons, Innovative Interfaces, Inc.
  • Bill Hoffman, Swets Information Services
  • Tim Jewell, University of Washington
  • Ted Koppel, Ex Libris

With NISO providing a neutral ground for discussions, as well as the infrastructure and support for the process, work on the standard began in 2006. The SUSHI standard was drafted and approved by NISO by late 2007, and with Release 3 of the COUNTER Code of Practice SUSHI became a requirement for COUNTER compliance.

Since approval in 2007, the SUSHI standard has been improved through continual maintenance by the SUSHI standing committee, which meets monthly to respond to community feedback and to adjust the standard. Through this work, the standing committee also serves as the maintenance agency for the COUNTER XML schema, an integral part of SUSHI. The committee continues work to promote interoperability and to prepare for future releases of the COUNTER Code of Practice.

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