Tag Archives: National Information Standards Organization

Interlibrary Loan Standards Undergoing Revision at the ISO Level

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My employer (LYRASIS) is a member of NISO (the accredited standards organization for information and documentation in the U.S.), and as the primary contact I see and consider ballots for standards issues that impact LYRASIS member libraries. The Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Application Protocol Specification (a.k.a. ISO 10160/10161) is up for its periodic review, and there is a bit of interesting movement on this standard. ISO 10160/10161 became a standard in 1993 so it predates the modern era of the web. The group shepherding the standard realized that progress had overtaken the specification and they started work on a reformulation of inter-machine ILL standards. This ballot and its supplemental documentation gives a view of the plans.

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ResourceSync Specification Draft Published for Comment

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ResourceSync — a joint effort of NISO and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) team with work funded by the Sloan Foundation — has published a draft specification that I urge members of the library technology community to look at. Building on the OAI-PMH strategies for synchronizing metadata, this project is modern web architecture technologies to enable the synchronization of the objects themselves, not just their metadata. From the abstract of the draft specification:

This ResourceSync specification describes a synchronization framework for the web consisting of various capabilities that allow third-party systems to remain synchronized with a server’s evolving resources. The capabilities can be combined in a modular manner to meet local or community requirements. The specification also describes how a server can advertise the synchronization capabilities it supports and how third party systems can discover this information. The specification repurposes the document formats defined by the Sitemap protocol and introduces extensions for them.

This is a preview of ResourceSync Specification Draft Published for Comment. Read the full post (193 words, 46 seconds estimated reading time)

Model Language on Library Data Ownership

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In September, Carl Grant wrote a blog post on the ownership of library data (“We have a problem… another vendor appearing to need education about exactly WHO owns library data“) that has been rolling around my own thoughts for, well, months. The spark of Carl’s post was a Twitter conversation where a major library system vendor appeared to be taking steps to limit what library/customers can do with their own data.

This is a preview of Model Language on Library Data Ownership. Read the full post (910 words, 3:38 minutes estimated reading time)

What To Do With ISO 2709:2008?

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My employer recently became a member of NISO and I was made the primary representative. This is my first formal interaction with the standards organization heirarchy (NISO → ANSI → ISO) and as one of the side effects I’m being asked to provide advice to NISO on how its vote should be cast on relevant ISO ballots. Much of it has been pretty routine so far, but today one jumped out at me — the systematic review for the standard ISO 2709:2008, otherwise blandly known as Information and documentation — Format for information exchange. You might know it as the underlying structure of MARC. (Though, to describe it accurately, MARC is a subset or profile of ISO 2709.) And the voting options are: Confirm (as is), Revise/Amend, Withdraw (the standard), or Abstain (from the vote).

This is a preview of What To Do With ISO 2709:2008?. Read the full post (627 words, 2:30 minutes estimated reading time)

“Do More … With Someone Else” — Guest Editor Introduction to NISO ISQ Fall Issue

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I’m pleased to announce that the Fall 2010 issue of NISO‘s International Standards Quarterly (ISQ) is done and available online to NISO members and ISQ subscribers. Print copies are scheduled to be mailed on December 28th. The individual issue is available for purchase (see the form link to on the issue homepage), and some of the articles are freely available on the NISO website. The theme for the issue is resource sharing, and I was privileged to be the guest editor for the issue. Included below is my introduction letter to whet your appetite for the full issue.

This is a preview of “Do More … With Someone Else” — Guest Editor Introduction to NISO ISQ Fall Issue. Read the full post (704 words, 1 image, 2:49 minutes estimated reading time)

Proposals for NISO Work Items: Physical Delivery Best Practices and Standardized Markup for Journal Articles

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NISO voting members are currently considering two new work items: a statement of best practices for the physical delivery of library resources and formalizing the NLM journal article DTD de facto standards. The Physical Delivery and Standardized Markup for Journal Articles proposal documents are openly available for download.

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Video Tour of OPAC Discovery Layer Tools

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In March, I gave a presentation at the NISO forum on Next Generation Discovery Tools: New Tools, Aging Standards. For those that were there, you may remember the bulk of the presentation was in the screencast tours of the functionality of 10 OPAC enhancement tools. Topping out at over 750MB, the presentation file was too big to share, but I promised to put together a combination of the presentation audio and the screencast videos in a much more manageable size. That video, along with a cleaned up version of the audio, is posted below.

This is a preview of Video Tour of OPAC Discovery Layer Tools. Read the full post (227 words, 54 seconds estimated reading time)

Links to OPAC Enhancements, Wrappers, and Replacements

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Below are the supplemental links for the presentation at the NISO workshop on discovery layers in Chapel Hill, NC, on March 28, 2008.

Update 20080404T1124 : Carolyn McCallum at Wake Forest University posted a great summary of day two of the NISO discovery layer forum, including an overview of my talk. Thanks, Carolyn!

Foundational Pieces


The presentation started as an extension of a DLTJ blog post. I also mentioned Marshal Breeding’s Library Technology Report published in July/August of 2007 and available from the ALA store.

This is a preview of Links to OPAC Enhancements, Wrappers, and Replacements. Read the full post (433 words, 1:44 minutes estimated reading time)

NISO Workshop Exploring the Discovery Layer; March 27-28, 2008; Chapel Hill, NC

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NISO is conducting a workshop later this month called Next Generation Discovery: New Tools, Aging Standards. The workshop is described this way: “Discovering scholarly information and data is essential for research and use of the content that the information community is producing and making available. The development of knowledge bases, web systems, repositories, and other sources for this information brings the need for effective discovery — search-driven discovery and network (or browse) driven discovery — tools to the forefront. With new tools and systems emerging, however, are standards keeping pace with the next generation of tools? What’s coming up and where might standards fit to assist in this arena? The forum will include both a look at the current state of discovery tools and at new visions of what these tools might look like in the next several years.”

This is a preview of NISO Workshop Exploring the Discovery Layer; March 27-28, 2008; Chapel Hill, NC. Read the full post (329 words, 1:19 minutes estimated reading time)

What’s the Deal with NCIP?

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What’s the deal with NCIP? For those that don’t know, NCIP is the NISO protocol that attempts to “define the various transactions needed to support circulation activities among independent library systems.” For example, “patron and item inquiry and update transactions, such as hold or reserve, check-out, renew, and check-in.”

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