Category: Standards

"WCAG 2.1 and the Current State of Web Accessibility in Libraries"

Carli Spina has published "WCAG 2.1 and the Current State of Web Accessibility in Libraries " in Weave.

Here's an excerpt:

Ensuring the accessibility of web content is key to ensuring that users with disabilities have equal access to online information and services. However, as a review of the literature demonstrates, even in the face of legal requirements, accessibility problems persist across the web, including in the online content created and shared by libraries. This article examines the new success criteria in the recently released WCAG 2.1, considers the opportunity they present for libraries to improve the user experience for users with a broad range of disabilities, and proposes steps to improve compliance with WCAG and online accessibility more broadly.

Research Data Curation Bibliography, Version 10 | Digital Curation and Digital Preservation Works | Open Access Works | Digital Scholarship | Digital Scholarship Sitemap

"EPUB 3.1 Now Proposed Specification"

IDPF has released "EPUB 3.1 Now Proposed Specification."

Here's an excerpt:

Work on EPUB 3.1 began in October of 2015, with a goal of simplifying the format and better aligning with the Open Web Platform. . . .

The EPUB 3.1 revision also introduces a new accessibility specification and techniques document. Although developed as part of EPUB 3.1 and to provide guidance on making conforming EPUB publications accessible, these new documents are designed to be equally applicable to older versions of the specification.

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Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project

NISO has released Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The National Information Standards Organization has published NISO RP-25-2016, Outputs of the NISO Alternative Assessment Project. This recommended practice on altmetrics, an expansion of the tools available for measuring the scholarly impact of research in the knowledge environment, was developed by working groups that were part of NISO's Altmetrics Initiative, a project funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The document outlines altmetrics definitions and use cases, alternative outputs in scholarly communications, data metrics, and persistent identifiers in scholarly communications. This guidance was necessary because, before the project began, scholars had long expressed dissatisfaction with traditional measures of success, such as the Impact Factor, but needed standards relating to other viable assessment methods.

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SUSHI-Lite: Deploying SUSHI as a Lightweight Protocol for Exchanging Usage via Web Services (Draft for Comment)

NISO has released SUSHI-Lite: Deploying SUSHI as a Lightweight Protocol for Exchanging Usage via Web Services, a draft for comment.

Here's an excerpt:

ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014, also known as the SUSHI (Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative) standard, is the key to automating the harvesting of COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) usage statistics. SUSHI is a critical standard for librarians charged with measuring and monitoring the use of their online collections by eliminating hours of painstaking effort that would otherwise be spent locating, retrieving and loading usage reports. However, environmental requirements evolve and standards like SUSHI need to update to serve these requirements. The introduction of various applications into the marketplace which offer alternative metrics, the development of the COUNTER Journal Usage Factor, the flourishing of institutional repositories and need to capture usage from them, and continued progress towards open and integrated systems in general, have all made an impact on how usage is consumed and exchanged. There is now a need for more lightweight technologies that will allow smaller sets of usage data to be exchanged in real-time.

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"Developing and Implementing a Technical Framework for Interoperable Rights Statements"

Mark Matienzo has published "Developing and Implementing a Technical Framework for Interoperable Rights Statements" in DPLA Updates.

Here's an excerpt:

Within the Technical Working Group of the International Rights Statements Working Group, we have been focusing our efforts on identifying a set of requirements and a technically sound and sustainable plan to implement the rights statements under development. Now that two of the Working Group's white papers have been released, we realized it was a good time to build on the introductory blog post by our Co-Chairs, Emily Gore and Paul Keller. Accordingly, we hope this post provides a good introduction to our technical white paper, Recommendations for the Technical Infrastructure for Standardized International Rights Statements, and more generally, how our thinking has changed throughout the activities of the working group.

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Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs

NISO has released Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

This is a new project to develop recommended practices for the Demand-Driven Acquisition (DDA) of Monographs. Many libraries have embraced DDA (also referred to as patron-driven acquisition) to present many more titles to their patrons for potential use and purchase than would ever be feasible under the traditional purchase model. If implemented correctly, DDA can make it possible to purchase only what is needed, allowing libraries to spend the same amount of money as they previously spent on monographs, but with a higher rate of use. However, this model requires libraries to develop and implement new procedures for adding titles to a "consideration pool", for keeping unowned titles available for purchase for some future period, often years after publication, for providing discovery methods of titles in the pool, establishing rules on when a title gets purchased or only temporarily leased, and how potential titles are discovered, and for handling of multiple formats of a title.

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ResourceSync Framework Specification (ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2014)

NISO has released the ResourceSync Framework Specification (ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2014).

Here's an excerpt:

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) announce the publication of the ResourceSync Framework Specification (ANSI/NISO Z39.99-2014)—a new American National Standard for the Web detailing various capabilities that a server can implement to allow third-party systems to remain synchronized with its evolving resources. The ResourceSync joint project, funded with support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and Jisc, was initiated to develop a new open standard on the real-time synchronization of web resources.

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NISO Draft for Comment: Demand-Driven Acquisition of Monographs

NISO has released a draft of NISO RP-20-201x, Demand-Driven Acquisition of Monographs for comment.

Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is seeking comments on the draft recommended practice Demand-Driven Acquisition of Monographs (NISO RP-20-201x). Launched in June 2012, the NISO Demand Driven Acquisition (DDA) Working Group was charged with developing a flexible model for DDA (also referred to as patron-driven acquisition) that works for publishers, vendors, aggregators, and libraries. The draft Recommended Practice discusses and makes recommendations about key aspects of DDA, goals and objectives of a DDA program, choosing parameters of the program, profiling options, managing MARC records for DDA, removing materials from the consideration pool, assessment of the program, providing long-term access to un-owned content, consortial considerations for DDA, and public library DDA.

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Information Standards Quarterly Issue on "2012 Year in Review and State of the Standards"

Information Standards Quarterly has published a special issue on "2012 Year in Review and State of the Standards."

Here's an excerpt from the announcement :

"NISO has a very active standards and recommended practices development pipeline with more than 20 active projects," explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for Programs. "In 2012, we published two new standards, the revision of a two-part standard, two new recommended practices, two recommended practice revisions, and a new white paper. We also launched three new initiatives and were awarded two new grants from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. These are all described in more detail in this issue of ISQ."

"NISO's role as the U.S. Administrator for the ISO TC 46 Committee on Information and Documentation and the Secretariat for the subcommittee on Identification and Description ensures that our community has an active role in international standards development as well," said Cynthia Hodgson, ISQ Managing Editor and a consultant for NISO who helps manage the ISO work. "Our members not only vote on these ISO standards ballots, they also provide critical comments to the development working groups and volunteer to be members of these groups to help shape these international standards. This issue summarizes the work of TC 46 and its four subcommittees during 2012."

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ResourceSync Framework Specification—Beta Draft

NISO and the Open Archives Initiative have released ResourceSync Framework Specification—Beta Draft.

Here's an excerpt:

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.

| A Look Back at 22 Years as an Open Access Publisher | Digital Scholarship |

Recommended Practices for Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials

NISO has released Recommended Practices for Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the National Federation for Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) have published a new Recommended Practice on Online Supplemental Journal Article Materials (NISO RP-15-2013). Supplemental materials are increasingly being added to journal articles, but until now there has been no recognized set of practices to guide in the selection, delivery, discovery, and preservation of these materials. To address this gap, NISO and NFAIS jointly sponsored an initiative to establish best practices that would provide guidance to publishers and authors for management of supplemental materials and would address related problems for librarians, abstracting and indexing services, and repository administrators. The Supplemental Materials project involved two teams working in tandem: one to address business practices and one to focus on technical issues. This new publication is the combined outcome of the two groups' work.

| Scholarly Electronic Publishing Bibliography 2010 ( paperback and PDF file; over 3,800 entries) | Digital Scholarship |

NISO Releases JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite, ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012

NISO has released JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite, ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012.

Here's an excerpt from the press release:

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the publication of a new American National Standard, JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite, ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2012. JATS provides a common XML format in which publishers and archives can exchange journal content by preserving the intellectual content of journals independent of the form in which that content was originally delivered. In addition to the element and attribute descriptions, three journal article tag sets (the Archiving and Interchange Tag Set, the Journal Publishing Tag Set, and the Article Authoring Tag Set) are part of the standard. While designed to describe the textual and graphical content of journal articles, it can also be used for some other materials, such as letters, editorials, and book and product reviews. "Al

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