todd carpenter managing director, niso

NISO and ICOLC Partnership for improving efficiency

through standards development, adoption and training

Todd CarpenterManaging Director, NISO

October 1, 2007 ICOLC Fall Meeting

Overview

• A bit about NISO and some changes underway

• Standards - Why should you care?• Improving efficiency in information

exchange– SERU and SUSHI

• More than just development - Educational and Training

• Ways that ICOLC members and NISO can partner to achieve common goals


Big Challenges, Modest Resources

• Revenue: $950K, up 20% in 2007• Primary income: Member dues (80%)• Other income: Seminars, Publishing (20%)• New sources of revenue in 2007 - Grants

– Mellon $196K, IMLS - $24K

• Staff: 3 Professional full-time• Virtual staff: 12+ (Consultants, partners)• 84 Voting Members, 25 LSA members as of

2007 • Maintenance Agencies: 13• Volunteers: 300+ spread out across the world


Who participates in NISO?• Broad representation


What has changed at NISO?

• Restructured leadership committee • Technological communication tools

– Funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation

• More rapid pace of development• New (to NISO) forms of consensus• More active international

participation


Standards – Why should I care?• Standards accelerate production,

ordering/sales, dissemination, locating, storing and preserving information

• Key standards which NISO has developed

and helping to bring consensus around– ISSN, OpenURL, Z39.50, NCIP– In development: DOI, SUSHI, SERU, Institutional

ID– 2008 Incubation: Library systems, IRs, E-Learning

systems, research data


Digital Transformations

• The tremendous benefits of computer technology and digital content are obvious

• Workflows have been radically altered – Manuscript creation, editing – Production, printing, hosting – Discovery, distribution, management and preservation

• We are only at the very beginning of this process.• Many of the in-house systems developed to

manage these workflows need to become standards-based in order to become scalable.


Building Economies of Scale• Standardization is about developing

scalability• New workflows needs

– Licensing and rights identification– Usage statistics– Identification– Back-end systems– Search and discovery tools– Business processes - like ILL/Document

Delivery


Two Quick examples of solutions

• NISO is focusing on removing bottlenecks in the information supply chain

• Licensing: – SERU - Simplified E-Reources

Understanding

• Usage data: – SUSHI - Standardized Usage Statistics

Harvesting Initiative


Briefly: SERU

• Need: We can and should have licenses for big ticket products, but do we need a license for everything and do we even have the time to do so?

– The average number of serials held by an ARL library is 40,598 Even presuming a generous 80% were in aggregated collections with a handful of licenses, the other 20% or more than 8,000 titles would still need to be individually managed

– One library has 600 titles subscribed to in print, which there is an online component for that they are not getting - because they don’t have time to address the license

• There is not enough time in the day to negotiate a license for each product individually


Briefly: SERU

• Need: Reduce the transaction costs of negotiating licenses, particularly for smaller products

• Solution– Framework for community-held best practices regarding

delivery and management of electronic content– Based on a decade of growing mutual trust and

experience with digital information– Broad consensus on issues such as authorized users,

third-party archiving, improper use, systematic downloading, etc.

– Not another model license, nor a click-through or wrap– Not for every product, or every publisher, or situation

• Why have lawyers arguing over small ticket products?


Briefly: SUSHI

• Need: Reduce the time and effort necessary to collect and format usage data

• “Time for meaningful analysis is compromised by the time required just to gather and record the statistics.”

– Median percentage of time spent on analysis is only 25 percent– More than half of the time is spent on gathering and formatting– Average number of hours spent working on usage data is 96

hours, but ranged on the high end up to 1-2 FTEs entirely focused on data

– Usage reports to help them make subscription decisions (94%) and justify expenditures (86%) for their electronic resources

DATA FROM: Gayle Baker, Eleanor J. Read, Vendor Usage Data for Electronic Resources: A Survey of Libraries http://smartech.gatech.edu/handle/1853/13611


Briefly: SUSHI

• Need: Simplify and automate the gathering of usage data for librarians

– Librarians spending months gathering data

• Solution– Server/Client system to exchange COUNTER

reports– Easily incorporated into usage systems (on

publisher side) or into ERM (on library side)– Client calls to server, asks for report, and

server runs the report and sends it on– Data exchange is taking place by machine

talking with machine


More examples of solutions

• Serials release notification• Authentication systems• Repository systems management• Ordering and delivery• Research data systems• Preservation• Interoperability with learning systems


The lifecycle of standards


Why engage in training and outreach?

• Simply reaching agreement, publishing and putting the standard on the shelf is NOT sufficient to a successful project

• Standards need to be broadly implemented to be successful

• NISO needs to provide outreach and training to close the loop on the standards process


NISO Education programs

• 2007 recruited an education committee– Organize the content and context of

programs

• 6 programs in 2007, expanding to 11 in 2008

• Goal of regionalizing meetings, expanding delivery options– Not everyone can travel to participate


Topics of programs

Range of meeting and outreach activities

• Thought Leader meetings• Technical implementation seminars• Topic-specific programs in developing

areas• Short overview and state of the art

discussions


Programs ideas for the future• Electronic resource management and systems• Usage data gathering and analysis• Licensing and facilitating appropriate usage• Long-term preservation and retention of digital

materials• Repository systems, implementation, effective

management and interoperation• Bibliographic data creation and exchange• Access and authentication• Content and E-Learning systems• Research data storage, access and manipulation


Consortia

• Most consortia provide much more than bulk purchasing

• Consortia pool resources to accomplish community goals and serve their constituency

• Key part of the mission statement of many consortia - innovation, cooperation and education

It is not always in the interests of one particular library to invest in standards development.


Standards and the small library• Large libraries benefits from standards - because

of the large amount of resources they process• However, the smallest institutions derive the

greatest benefit from standards development• They don’t have the resources to custom program

or tweak systems that aren’t interoperable - they will just go without

At present, these institutions ARE NOT represented

Consortia can bring a voice to these institutions to the standards table


Ways NISO and consortia can partner

• Co-sponsoring regional training programs• Grant co-application• Contributing to outreach and understanding

by encouraging publication and presentations• Facilitating or coordinating participation in

standards development from consortia members

• Demanding adherence to standards from vendors

• Direct development support• Voting representation


Benefits of partnership

• Better standards through greater participation

• Faster development cycles• More occurring on parallel tracks• More rapid adoption and greater use• Increased efficiency• More, credible and useful information

to end-users more easily and with less overhead


Thank you!

Todd Carpenter, Managing [email protected]

One North Charles StreetSuite 1905Baltimore, MD 21201 USA+1 (301) 654-2512Fax: +1 (410) 685-5278www.niso.org

todd carpenter managing director, niso

Documents

worldicolc fall meetingwho

icolc members

standards development

library systems

information key standards

icolc partnership

elearning systems

obvious workflows