[SigLT-L] NISO Publishes Maintenance Revisions of Dublin Core and SUSHI Standards

[Cynthia Hodgson]

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the
publication of maintenance revisions of two widely used standards: The
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2012) and The
Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol
(ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2013). Both standards were revised to make very minor
updates. The Dublin Core standard defines fifteen metadata elements for
resource description in a cross-disciplinary information environment and is
used as the basis for most metadata standards in use today. The SUSHI
Protocol defines an automated request and response model for the harvesting
of electronic resource usage data and is required for conformance with the
COUNTER Code of Practice.

"The DCMI Usage Board approved a change to the usage comment for the
'subject' element to eliminate some ambiguity with the 'coverage' element,"
explains Thomas Baker, Chief Information Officer for the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative, the maintenance agency for the Dublin Core standard.
"The new version of the ANSI/NISO standard corresponds to version 1.1 of the
specification on the DCMI website."

"The SUSHI Standing Committee initiated this revision of the standard to
make two minor updates," states Oliver Pesch, Chief Strategist for EBSCO
Information Services and Co-chair of the SUSHI Standing Committee. "An
additional error code was added and the appendix about security
considerations was updated to reflect technology changes and experience
gained since the initial implementation of the SUSHI protocol."

"Standards do not drop into a black hole once they are published," states
Todd Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. "They must be supported and
regularly reviewed to ensure they are kept up-to-date. Both the Dublin Core
and the SUSHI standard receive ongoing oversight from their respective
Maintenance Agency and Standing Committee. The maintenance revisions just
published are examples of how the standards are revised to address even
minor issues found during implementation."

Both standards are available for free download from the NISO website; Dublin
Core at www.niso.org/standards/z39-85-2012 and SUSHI at
www.niso.org/standards/z39-93-2013/. Additional information on the use of
the Dublin Core standard is available from the DCMI website at
www.dublincore.org. SUSHI FAQs, schemas, and implementation information are
available at www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi.

About the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate
the creation, persistent management, and effective interchange of
information so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To
fulfill this mission, NISO engages libraries, publishers, information
aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and
scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of
knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across
the entire lifecycle of an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit
association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI).
More information about NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org.