Library Technology Guides

NISO to represent the United States on ISO Technical Committee for Cultural Heritage Conservation. The National Information Standards Organization announced it has been appointed by the American National Standards Institute to manage the accredited US Technical Advisory Group to the International Organization for Standardization's new Technical Committee on Cultural Heritage Conservation. [Full Announcement].

Survey on Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) and Web-Scale Discovery from the NISO Open Discovery Initiative. The NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) aims to define standards and/or best practices for the web-scale library discovery services that are based on indexed search. As discovery services increasingly explore ways to include generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) into their products, the NISO ODI Standing Committee is interested in your expectations and concerns about Generative AI in web-scale library discovery. [Full Announcement].

NISO approves working group to develop a US national PID strategy. Voting members of the National Information Standards Organization have approved the formation of a Working Group to develop an ANSI/NISO standard for a United States national PID strategy, which will increase the adoption of PIDs and provide critical support to open research. NISO is currently seeking members from across the information community, including representatives from federal agencies, PID providers, academic libraries, publishers, and software providers, to join the resulting Working Group. Persistent identifiers, or PIDs, are a critical part of the infrastructure supporting scholarly communications and open research. They support research discovery and citations, allow users and systems to easily identify authors and institutions and link them to research outputs, and help ensure compliance with a growing number of government and funder mandates advancing open scholarship. To date, however, approaches to encouraging the adoption of PIDs and investment in PID infrastructure have not been coordinated, and there is little guidance available on how best to improve the implementation and efficacy of PIDs within the diverse spheres of the US research landscape. [Full Announcement].

Rachel Bruce to deliver opening keynote at NISO Plus Global/Online. NISO announced that Rachel Bruce, Head of Open Science at UK Research and Innovation, will deliver the opening keynote, “Open research, incentivizing change, and underpinning infrastructure: A UK Perspective,” at the NISO Plus 2024 Global/Online conference, September 17–18, 2024. [Full Announcement].

Preliminary program for NISO Plus Global/Online now available. The 2024 NISO Plus Global/Online conference (September 17–18) is just over two months away! As with all NISO Plus events, the focus is on identifying problems in the scholarly ecosystem that the community can solve together, and the format will foster conversation during the sessions, empowering attendees to be a part of any solutions that might emerge. And as the early bird registration deadline (August 9) approaches, we are excited to announce that our preliminary program is now available. [Full Announcement].

NISO Publishes Recommended Practice for the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern. The National Information Standards Organization announced the publication of the Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern Recommended Practice. Funding for the CREC Working Group as well as for research at the University of Illinois' Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science project, which aided Working Group deliberations and decisions, was generously provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. [Full Announcement].

Ginny Barbour to deliver keynote address at NISO Plus 2024 Global/Online. We are delighted to announce that Professor Virginia Barbour, Editor-in-Chief of the Medical Journal of Australia and Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology, will deliver one of two keynote addresses at the NISO Plus 2024 Global/Online conference. [Full Announcement].

Call for Participation for NISO CCLIP Consortia Working Group. The IMLS-funded Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Project and its associated Collaborative Collections Lifecycle Infrastructure Project continue to build greater community collaboration in smart collection management and promote access to collections by improving institutional efficiency through partnership. The CCLP seeks to overcome serious barriers to broader implementations of cooperative collections management, including the lack of available vendor-neutral interoperable systems, adequate governance and decision-making frameworks, and assessment tools. [Full Announcement].

NISO Welcomes New Board Members for 2024-25. The National Information Standards Organization announced the results of its recent Board elections for the term beginning July 1, 2024. Robert Wheeler (Director, Publishing Technology, American Society of Mechanical Engineers) will transition to the role of Chair of the NISO Board, having served as Vice Chair for the past year. He is replaced as Vice Chair by Jonathan Clark (Principal, Consultant and Managing Agent, The DOI Foundation), who will assume the role of Chair for 2025–26 next July. Karim Boughida (Dean of University Libraries, Stony Brook) rotates to the position of Past Chair, having served as NISO Chair for 2023–24. NISO Voting Members have also re-elected Trevor A. Dawes (Vice Provost for Libraries and Museums and May Morris University Librarian, University of Delaware) and elected three new directors: Jenny Mathias (Global Marketing and Operations Director, Cambridge University Press and Assessment), Jill Morris (Executive Director, PALCI, the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation), and Emily Singley (Vice President, North American Library Relations, Elsevier) [Full Announcement].

NISO's Draft Revision of the Journal Article Version (JAV) Recommended Practice now open for public comment. The National Information Standards Organization announced that its draft revision of the Journal Article Version (JAV) Recommended Practice is open for public comment through July 7, 2024, at the project web page. First published in 2008, the JAV Recommended Practice was developed to describe different versions of online scholarly content. Since then, publishing practices have continued to evolve, and with changes such as the rapid growth in preprint publications, the concept of a single version of record has become less relevant. Questions about citations for different versions and version labeling, for example, have highlighted the need for standardization of terms as well as recommendations for how to manage, track, and index multiple versions. The NISO working group was formed to address these challenges and develop a revised JAV Recommended Practice including an appendix with multiple examples illustrating a variety of use cases for those looking for guidance. [Full Announcement].

NISO's Draft Interoperable System of Controlled Digital Lending Recommended Practice now open for public comment. The National Information Standards Organization announced that its draft Interoperable System of Controlled Digital Lending Recommended Practice is now available for public comment through April 21. Supported by a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and formed in 2022, the NISO IS-CDL working group has completed an outline of the technical and functional processes necessary for libraries to interoperably implement CDL in a variety of situations. [Full Announcement].

Announcing NISO's new strategic plan. The National Information Standards Organization announced their strategic plan for October 2023–2026. The strategic planning process is led by NISO's Board of Directors, working with the Executive Director and staff. The updated plan, developed by an ad hoc Strategic Planning Committee led by Board member Jonathan Clark, builds on the success NISO has seen following its 2019 merger with the National Federation of Advanced Information Services. The plan takes into account NISO's expanded membership and the growth of the NISO Plus conference and positions the organization to aggressively and sustainably pursue new objectives and goals. As part of the planning process, the Committee renewed their commitment to NISO's mission and vision statement and established a new set of values. [Full Announcement].

Boston Library Consortium and NISO announce membership agreement. The Boston Library Consortium and the National Information Standards Organization have announced an agreement to provide NISO Library Standards Alliance membership to all BLC members through December 31, 2026. The agreement will extend full LSA membership benefits to BLC's 25 member libraries, granting them free access to NISO's educational webinars program, unlimited participation in NISO Working Groups and Standing Committees, and discounted registration for all non-webinar events, including the annual NISO Plus conference. BLC also joins NISO as a Voting Member, which gives the lead consortium organization the opportunity to influence the direction of technological advances in information management through driving standards and best practices in the information community. [Full Announcement].

Remembering Bruce Rosenblum. It is with deep sadness that NISO relates the passing of friend and colleague Bruce Rosenblum. Well-known throughout the information community, he was a quiet but influential leader, and his impact will be felt for years to come in the unseen infrastructure supporting the millions of people who write, edit, and read scholarly articles. [Full Announcement].

Thomas Padilla to Deliver Opening Keynote at NISO Plus 2024 in Baltimore. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to announce that Thomas Padilla, Deputy Director, Archiving and Data Services at the Internet Archive, will deliver the opening keynote address at the NISO Plus 2024 conference in Baltimore on Tuesday, February 13, at 9:30 am. Internationally recognized for his leadership in promoting responsible stewardship and computational use of memory organization collections as data, Thomas earned his MS in Library and Information Science from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Thomas has more than a decade of experience developing, consulting, publishing, presenting, and teaching on responsible stewardship and computational use of memory organization collections and digital strategy. [Full Announcement].

NISO releases content Profile/Linked Document Standard. The National Information Standards Organization announced publication of its newest standard, ANSI/NISO Z39.105-2023, Content Profile/Linked Document, which enables portions of content, data, semantics, and other resources from separate sources to be combined into a single, standards-based format optimized for interchange, search, and display. [Full Announcement].

Ed Pentz to Receive NISO's 2024 Miles Conrad Award. The National Information Standards Organization announced that Ed Pentz of Crossref will be the recipient of the 2024 Miles Conrad Award, a lifetime achievement award for those working in the information community. Ed is the founding Executive Director of Crossref, the largest open scholarly infrastructure provider globally. As an active champion of openness in scholarly communication, he has driven or been involved in the founding and governance of a number of organizations and initiatives in this space and is a leading proponent of the Principles of Open Scholarly Infrastructure (POSI) that support the long-term sustainability and availability of the infrastructure enabling research communication and scholarship. He is well known for his leadership and diplomacy in building consensus across the community to resolve some of the most challenging issues in scholarly communications. [Full Announcement].

Preliminary Program now available for NISO Plus 2024 in Baltimore. NISO is planning for the NISO Plus 2024 conference in Baltimore, Maryland (February 13–14). Celebrating its fifth anniversary, the conference will continue to bring librarians, publishers, tech and service providers, government agencies, and more to address some of the biggest trends and issues in the information community. The preliminary agenda is now available and the early bird registration deadline is January 8. [Full Announcement].

NISO's Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC) Draft Recommended Practice now open for public Comment. The National Information Standards Organization announced that its draft Communication of Retractions, Removals, and Expressions of Concern (CREC) Recommended Practice (NISO RP-45-202X) is available for public comment through December 2. The Recommended Practice is the product of a working group made up of cross-industry stakeholders formed in spring 2022. The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation generously provided funding for this Working Group as well as for research at the University of Illinois' Reducing the Inadvertent Spread of Retracted Science (RISRS) project, which has informed Working Group deliberations and decisions. [Full Announcement].

NISO announces plans for two NISO Plus Conferences in 2024. National Information Standards Organization is planning two NISO Plus events in 2024, one in person and the other online. This strategy will afford attendees a valuable opportunity to interact in an on-site meeting in 2024 while also ensuring that the organization can continue to build on the success of previous Plus conferences, which have been hosted virtually since 2021. NISO will also continue to host an annual virtual conference. NISO Plus Global/Online will be held over two days in September 2024, with a program built on proposals solicited from the community. In addition to offering a more inclusive, accessible option for those who cannot attend in person, the virtual conference will continue to build on the growth in international engagement enabled by the shift from in-person to online meetings. [Full Announcement].