Abstract
Nothing can function well without standards and best practices, including the information world. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) works with the information community to develop standards and best practices to improve interoperability and workflow efficiency in a wide range of areas from metadata transfer to information retrieval. To ensure a community consensus, NISO brings every interested party into the process of developing standards and best practices through working groups. Current work and updates from two NISO-sponsored working groups, Open Discovery Initiative and Presentation and Identification of E-Journals, were covered in this presentation.
INTRODUCTION
The existence of standards and best practices is a crucial element for interoperability, efficient workflows, and effective development and implementation of resources by vendors and libraries. The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has played an essential role in shaping those standards and best practices to help librarians, vendors, publishers, and system providers to find harmony. This presentation, consisting of three sections, illustrated the role of NISO in initiating, writing, reviewing, and marketing best practices, particularly, the Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) and Presentation and Identification of E-Journals (PIE-J). Nettie Lagace opened the presentation by providing an overview of NISO, its responsibilities and guiding principles. After this overview, Marshall Breeding introduced the new NISO ODI and shared the working group's plan. Lastly, Regina Romano Reynolds gave an update on the PIE-J working group.
OVERVIEW OF NISO
Lagace started off by explaining NISO's responsibilities for identifying, developing, maintaining, and publishing technical standards to manage information in the changing and ever more digital environment.Footnote 1 Founded in 1939, NISO works with all interested parties in the community, from libraries, publishers, and vendors, to system providers, to ensure consistent and accurate data sharing, transfer, and retrieval. Over the years, NISO has produced many classic standards, such as Z39.2 Information Interchange Format (the basis for MARC 21) and Z39.88 OpenURL. NISO also engages continuously in new initiatives; ODI and PIE-J are examples of two ongoing NISO-sponsored initiatives.
NISO staff consists of four employees and one external consultant. Todd Carpenter, Executive Director, is the public face of NISO and provides leadership to the group. Nettie Lagace, Associate Director for Programs, facilitates the topic committees, develops working groups, and encourages broad adoption of the resulting standards and best practices. Cynthia Hodgson is the external consultant serving in a Technical Editor role. Victoria Kinnear, Business Development and Operations Manager, and Tom Koenig, Programs Assistant, are in charge of every aspect of the office operation and serve as the backbone of the organization. But Lagace emphasized that these five staff do not make the “real” NISO; in reality NISO is made up of everyone in the information communities who participates in the creation, implementation, and review of recommended practices.
NISO manages three major committees: the Discovery to Delivery Topic Committee, the Business Information Topic Committee, and the Content and Collection Management Topic Committee. These topic committees recruit librarians, systems providers, vendors, and publishers who are responsible for maintaining stable standards and best practices while at the same time trying to develop new ones as the changing landscape may demand. Besides the topic committees, NISO also convenes a variety of working groups that actively involve interested parties in problem-solving processes. The groups’ members meet together over a period of time to discuss their concerns in different areas, provide their perspectives on what the issues are and what could be used to solve them, and figure out whether the solution might work or not. Lagace showed a slide listing all of the active working groups.
All work items or initiatives were started by people who had some “itches”—problems in their work or workflows—who needed to find some ways to “scratch” them—create shared solutions. Lagace invited audience members to submit new work items and expressed NISO's willingness to provide sponsorship. Lagace also briefly introduced the process of getting a new work item started from scratch. An initial draft of one to two pages would be sufficient to introduce a new idea and Lagace would work with it to develop a “work item proposal.” The major ingredients of a work item proposal are: (1) what is not working, who is affected and how; (2) any other related efforts that might be brought in, communicated with, or developed in harmony with the proposed work item; (3) who will benefit and how; (4) who should be participating; (5) what is the scope of the initiative; and (6) how to encourage uptake by interested parties. After a work item proposal is written, it will go to one of the topic committees for further review and refinements and then to the NISO voting membership for approval as a new work item.
Lagace continued to share with the audience some of NISO's important guiding principles. Collaboration is one of them. NISO works with librarians, vendors, publishers, and system providers in many ways. Unlike many other industries, librarians tend to work in a collegial and cooperative manner. This is something that NISO really appreciates. NISO develops both standards and best practices. Standards are prescriptive and rule-oriented. OpenURL is an example of a standard. Recommended practices, by comparison, are lighter weight documents. They are not less important, but interested parties have the option to adopt them or not. Knowledge Bases and Related Tools (KBART), which is related to OpenURL, is a working group that recommends best practices and guidelines for the inclusion of e-journal metadata in a knowledgebase.
Equal balance is one of the most important principles that NISO strives to follow. Equal balance and representation are considered in the creation of the working groups and the eventual publication of the work. Consensus is a principle used by NISO to value feedback and comments, even negative ones, coming from outside of the working group. Another principle is the open process. None of the work happens behind closed doors. NISO offers all the documents for public access on its website, and is developing its social media presence through Twitter, blogging, and so on. Lagace strongly encouraged members of the audience to participate. NISO publishes Newsline, a monthly online newsletter, where one can go to volunteer for working groups or committees; register for webinars, forums, or teleconferences; and receive standards updates. Working Group Connection, a quarterly supplement to Newsline, reports on all working groups’ current activities and progress.Footnote 2 Lagace concluded with a general call for volunteers and input on working groups and committees, especially the NISO Education Committee, which helps plan webinars and in-person events. She expressed her appreciation for all the efforts made by volunteers so far and she will continue to keep her ears open for good suggestions and ideas.
OPEN DISCOVERY INITIATIVE
Marshall Breeding presented information on ODI, which is a recently launched initiative sponsored by NISO. ODI aims at defining standards and/or best practices for the new generation of library discovery services that are based on indexed search.3 Library search has evolved from the original card catalog, through online catalog, federated search tools, to next-generation library catalogs, and eventually to index-based discovery services. The scope of library search also has expanded along the way from integrated library system (ILS) data only, simply books and journals; to ILS data, digital repository data, and other e-resources libraries subscribe to—all combined together. Compared to federated search tools, these index-based discovery systems are primarily based on pre-harvested and pre-indexed data in order to deliver sophisticated services with instant performance. Because of these advantages, libraries rely on index-based discovery systems to provide patrons access to the rapidly growing breadth of information. But librarians still have uncertainties about what they and their patrons are getting through those index-based discovery systems. Discovery system vendors and content providers are also striving to make it a better ecosystem. The ODI working group is working on identifying all the issues and it is aiming to come up with solutions to optimize the ecosystem.
Libraries spend the majority of their budget on e-resources so they have a need to maximize the value of their acquisitions. Libraries tend to expect that the full content of products to which they subscribe, including licensed and purchased products, are delivered to their patrons through discovery systems. Libraries also expect discovery services have the capability to search e-journals at article level. However, at this time, libraries have no way to determine what is being indexed in those discovery systems. It is also impossible for libraries to assess what level of indexing, either citation level or full-text level, is used by their discovery systems. ODI will provide solutions to help libraries to evaluate what they are getting and aid libraries to compare different discovery services.
Discovery system vendors also have encountered difficulties in meeting libraries’ expectations. In order to create effective and article-level indexes, discovery system vendors have to rely on the cooperation of content providers to provide access to their metadata, and increasingly, also to the full-text of information resources. Currently, discovery system vendors build their indexes basically based on private agreements and ad hoc exchange methodologies with content providers. Not every content provider is willing to grant discovery system vendors full access to its metadata or full-text finformation, and discovery system vendors may not have the right to index all licensed content to include in their discovery systems. These gaps result in losses on both the library and content provider sides. Not only can libraries not get everything they have paid for through those discovery systems; content providers also cannot increase the value of their resources. Moreover, the complexity of the private agreement approach creates barriers for newer and smaller content providers to participate, which further excludes some of the content that libraries subscribe to. A new standardized approach needs to be established to bring in all potential publishers and increase the discoverability of every publisher's content. Furthermore, discovery system vendors who are also content providers need to give equal treatment to their own content and content from other publishers.
ODI is a fairly new initiative. The initial exploratory meeting took place during the 2011 American Library Association (ALA) Annual Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana. The discussion caught NISO's attention and it eventually became a NISO initiative. ODI formally launched in October 2011 and the working group formed in February 2012. Marshall Breeding, Independent Consultant, and Jenny Walker, from Ex Libris, are Co-Chairs of this working group. All constituents, from libraries, content providers, to discovery system vendors, are equally represented. The ODI group reports its progress to NISO through the Document to Delivery topic committee.
Some goals of the ODI working group include: identify needs and requirements of the three stakeholder groups in this area of work; create recommendations and tools to streamline the process by which content providers, discovery service vendors, and librarians work together to better serve libraries and their patrons; and provide effective means for librarians to assess the level of participation by content providers in discovery systems, to evaluate the breadth and depth of content indexed and the degree to which this content is made available to their patrons. Some specific deliverables the group is aiming to achieve include: (1) to create a standard vocabulary to aid communication; (2) to seek a better way, beyond private agreements, to transfer data between content providers and discovery system vendors; (3) to define level of indexing and the depth and breadth of content available to Open Discovery indexes; (4) to protect content providers’ intellectual property rights by defining a minimum standard of what can be displayed from content provider supplied data; (5) to incorporate fair links to content; (6) to incorporate usage statistics gathering and reporting function; and (7) to define and evaluate levels of compliance of participators.
Currently, the ODI working group is in the process of information gathering from all related parties. The group expects to have the initial draft of recommended practices completed in January 2013 and have the final draft ready by May 2013. To learn more about ODI, visit www.niso.org/workrooms/odi.
Presentation AND Identification of E-Journals
Regina Romano Reynolds shared with the audience the latest information from the PIE-J working group. The focus of her presentation was on using PIE-J as an example to show how NISO can help with some of the pain points that our information community is experiencing. Inconsistent and inaccurate presentation of journal information in the online environment presents barriers to researchers.
Reynolds started by pointing out some pain points that researchers and students are experiencing when searching for electronic contents. Missing earlier journal titles or listing old contents under current titles gives researchers, libraries, and publishers the most pain. When publishers put retrospective content online without including the titles under which the content was originally published, all of the older titles become nearly impossible to find because everything is listed under current titles. With misplaced contents, researchers sometimes cannot get to articles they need or will give up trying; nor can they cite articles correctly, which creates further chaos in scholarly communication. Failed access will result in patron loss, which decreases the values of libraries’ subscriptions and publishers’ contents. No one wins!
Another pain point is missing information such as enumeration, publishing statements, and dates. The metadata that librarians and researchers have come to expect on printed journals is often not present or obscured on electronic journals. It is hard for researchers to find a statement of who is responsible for the journal; or sometimes the statement appears in unpredictable places. Enumeration and date still matter to us even though we do not need to do check-in for electronic journals. They matter tremendously when researchers try to locate an article; they also matter when researchers try to cite one.
A third pain point mentioned by Reynolds is missing or incorrect International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) information especially when the print ISSN is often used for an electronic version. Link resolvers will not function properly with the wrong ISSN. The misuse of ISSN for print and electronic copies also increases the workload of the U.S. ISSN Center. A final pain point was the problems that can result from digitizing back contents in an unpredictable fashion. Some back contents are digitized with no metadata supplied. Researchers have a hard time determining whether the content is complete or what title the content was originally published under. The PIE-J recommended practices do not intend to discourage the wonderful digitization process, but librarians certainly are looking forward to having guidelines to make sure that content is presented consistently.
If this had been a medical crisis, with all these pains, we would have to call “Dr. House”; but being in a library world, we called “Dr. NISO.” NISO recognized how these issues were affecting the broad information community and offered to take on this project. The PIE-J working group was formed after going through all the necessary procedures. Bob Boissy (Springer) and Cindy Hepfer (University at Buffalo, the State University of New York) are Co-Chairs for this working group. The group understood that their first step was not going to be to “perform surgery” on either librarians or publishers, but to create a change in their general consciousness about the issues. Cindy Hepfer and Regina Reynolds wrote “In Search of Best Practices for the Presentation of E-Journals” to articulate the frustrations a fictitious student encountered when trying to find a known article.4 It raised people's consciousness that better ways of presenting e-journals are needed in order to aid the identifying process and ensure that students and other researchers can locate the articles they need.
Like other NISO working groups, PIE-J group followed the NISO guiding principle on balanced representation in the working group. The PIE-J working group has diverse members from a wide variety of constituencies, from the library and publisher world to the aggregator and vendor world. They have cataloging librarians on the team to make sure metadata looks good from the back end; they also have reference librarians on board to provide first-hand experiences with users. The group has never met face to face. They conduct business by having biweekly conference calls. And as of the North American Serials Interest Group (NASIG) meeting, they had prepared draft recommended practices ready for the formal NISO comment process.
The documentation consisted of an introduction; recommended practices in a clear, short, simple, and reproducible format; thirty-two detailed examples; and appendices that include information about ISSN, CrossRef, Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs), and other relevant topics. Some key recommendations include: (1) retention of title and citation information under which articles were originally published; (2) display of title histories, including information relating to title changes and related metadata; (3) display of correct ISSN for different formats and for changed titles; (4) retention and display of vital publication information across the history of a journal, including publisher names, clear numbering and dates, editors, editorial boards, sponsoring organization, and frequency of publication; (5) graphic design and inclusion of information that allows easy access to all content; and (6) special considerations for retroactive digitization.5
The draft recommendations were commented on through July 18, 2012. Comments and feedback received will be discussed and incorporated to the existing draft to ensure consensus within the community. Then, the finalized text will be published and shared via NISO's website. This will not mark the end of the PIE-J working group. Instead, the group will retool for ongoing maintenance to make sure the recommendations stay up-to-date. Ongoing marketing and outreach to the various audiences are also needed. For more information about PIE-J, visit www.niso.org/workrooms/piej.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS
The presentations stirred some in-depth conversation about ODI and PIE-J centering on three main questions. The first question concerned how to share these initiatives with colleagues, publishers, discovery service vendors, and other interested parties and how to get buy-ins from them. Suggestions from presenters included the recommendation that a librarian or publisher start from where it matters in one's own area of work. Using PIE-J as an example, one could share students’ and faculty's frustrations about finding articles with colleagues and express the concern that patrons will leave the library behind if they cannot get what they want from it. Communicate to publishers what one would like to see and perhaps hint that their competitors are doing better in e-journal presentation and identification. If they are not going with the recommended practices, very likely they will lose a part of the market. Also, report to publishers any misplaced contents and make sure they get corrected. As Reynolds pointed out, it would give publishers a facelift if publishers put the right contents under the right titles, instead of putting everything under the current titles. The total number of titles available through a publisher or a package will go up, which benefits publishers’ marketing. In addition, if one's institution or departments on campus publish small society journals and one's library digitizes back contents, it is critical for those people to be aware of PIE-J recommendations as well. The second question was an ODI question on how to evaluate discovery services and how to deal with the situation where discovery services vendors are also content providers. According to Breeding, a discovery service cannot be evaluated simply by the number of items indexed. Libraries have to be able to tell whether it is comprehensive or not based on what they have subscribed to. It is the goal of the ODI group to come up with solutions to help libraries to do the assessment. The group is also aiming to bring more transparency about whose contents are represented in discovery services and how that content is represented. Breeding asserted that discovery services will not be entirely valued if they just serve as a tool for the publisher's own contents. The very last question was about whether PIE-J is limited to the United States or is it an international recommendation. Lagace indicated that things tend to be global by the nature of the reach of the Internet nowadays. The publishers who are on board with PIE-J are all over the world. Reynolds has also talked to international audiences about PIE-J already. PIE-J definitely can reach across borders in an informal way and it may be possible to incorporate some of its provisions into an upcoming revision of ISO 8, the international standard on the presentation of journals.
Notes
1. National Information Standards Organization, About NISO, 2012, http://www.niso.org/about/ (accessed July 5, 2012).
2. NISO, Newsline and its quarterly supplement Working Group Connection, http://www.niso.org/publications/newsline (accessed October 12, 2012).
3. National Information Standards Organization, NISO Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Work Item Proposal, 2012, http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/download.php/7175/Open%20Discovery%20Initiative%20-%20work%20item%20for%20ballot.pdf (accessed July 5, 2012).
4. R. R. Reynolds and C. Hepfer, “In Search of Best Practices for the Presentation of E-Journals,” Information Standards Quarterly 21, no. 2 (2009): 19–24.
5. National Information Standards Organization, PIE-J: The Presentation & Identification of E-Journals. Draft for Comment, 2012, http://www.niso.org/apps/group_public/document.php?document_id=8568&wg_abbrev=piej (accessed July 5, 2012).