[Asis-l] NISO Z39.50 Maintenance Revision Now at Ballot

[Marilyn Geller]

Bethesda, Md., USA – (April 10, 2002) NISO, the National Information
Standards Organization, has released for ballot a maintenance revision of
NISO's landmark standard Z39.50-1995.  This standard specifies a
client/server-based protocol for Information Retrieval defining procedures
and formats for a client to search a database provided by a server, retrieve
database records, and perform related information retrieval functions. The
protocol addresses communication between information retrieval applications
at the client and server.  Balloting will be conducted from March 29 through
May 13, 2002.  This is a Maintenance Revision, and no existing
implementations will be disrupted.

This maintenance revision incorporates all the corrections, defect reports,
and amendments. approved by the ZIG since 1995.  These changes include:
implementer agreements, amendments such as duplicate detection service and
encapsulation, defect reports, commentaries, clarifications, version 3
baseline requirements, Z39.50 attribute architecture, and negotiation model.
The Library of Congress is the Maintenance Agency and Registration Authority
for the Z39.50 standard, and documentation on these changes can be found on
their website at: http://lcweb.loc.gov/z3950/agency/amend/amend.html.  The
draft standard is available for free downloading from the NISO website at
http://www.niso.org.

About NISO:
NISO is the only U.S. group accredited by the American National Standards
Institute to develop and promote technical standards for use in information
delivery services providing voluntary standards for libraries, publishers
and related information technology organizations.  All NISO standards are
developed by consensus under the guidance of experts and practitioners in
the field to meet the needs of both the information user and the producer.
For information about NISO’s current standardization interests and
membership possibilities, please visit the NISO website at
http://www.niso.org.

For additional information contact NISO Headquarters at (301) 654-2512.
Email: nisohq at niso.org