[Asis-l] NISO Annual Meeting and Program at ALA

[Marilyn Geller]

Bethesda, Md., USA - (May 21, 2002) NISO, the National Information
Standards Organization, will hold its annual meeting during the American
Library Association Annual Conference on Sunday, June 16th from 2:00 to
4:00 at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta, Hanover Room C/D.  Beverly Lynch,
Chair of the NISO Board of Directors will conduct the meeting and will
give an update on NISO standards current work and a view  to what's
ahead.  The program, jointly sponsored with the LITA TESLA Committee,
will feature four speakers describing high-profile projects are using
emerging standards.  

Randy Menakes of Ex Libris will speak about NCIP, NISO's circulation
interchange protocol. This standard, currently in development, defines
the various transactions needed to support circulation activities among
independent library systems such as patron and item inquiry and update
transactions, hold or reserve functions, check-out, renew, and check-in.
It is also expected to support the circulation of printed and electronic
materials and will facilitate direct patron borrowing, remote patron
authentication, on-line payment, and controlled access to electronic
documents. 

Shibboleth, a project developed under the auspices of Internet2/MACE,
will also be discussed.  Shibboleth focuses on the safe delivery of
reliable authorization data and is based on agreement between
information providers and network infrastructure groups on how to
exchange authentication, authorization, and demographic information.

Kim Parker from Yale University will describe the OpenURL standard now
in development.  OpenURL is a syntax to create web-transportable
packages of metadata and/or identifiers about an information object.
Such packages are at the core of context-sensitive or open link
technology. By standardizing this syntax, the OpenURL will enable many
other innovative user-specific services. 

METS, the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard will be discussed
by Steve Abrams of Harvard University. The METS schema is a standard for
encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding
objects within a digital library expressed using the XML schema language
of the World Wide Web Consortium. This standard is maintained in the
Network Development and MARC Standards Office of the Library of
Congress, and is being developed as an initiative of the Digital Library
Federation. 

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