From: NISO <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 8 Jan 2015 11:22:03 -0500

NISO Publishes Revised SUSHI Standard and Supporting Documentation

New filters and report attributes add to the SUSHI protocol’s
flexibility in retrieving e-resource usage data

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published a
revision to the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative
(SUSHI) Protocol (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2014). The SUSHI standard defines
an automated request and response model for the harvesting of
electronic resource usage data utilizing a Web services framework that
can replace the user-mediated collection of usage data reports. It was
designed as a generalized protocol extensible to a variety of usage
reports. An extension designed specifically to work with COUNTER
reports is provided. This new version of the SUSHI standard extends
the filter support to allow multiple filters and/or report attributes
to be included in the SUSHI Request. Use of these filters and
attributes is optional, making the new version backwards compatible
with the previous one. Additional documentation supporting SUSHI
implementation has been updated including SUSHI schemas, COUNTER
schemas, sample reports, selected SUSHI Harvesters tools, and the
Server Registry.

“The SUSHI standard was created with the notion of filters; however,
the only filter originally provided for was that of the date range for
the report,” explains Oliver Pesch, Chief Product Strategist, EBSCO
Information Services, and Co-chair of the SUSHI Standing Committee.
“With use, a number of cases have surfaced where additional filters
and other report attributes would be beneficial. The revised standard
allows, for example, filtering by a particular platform for harvesting
when a given SUSHI server provides usage for multiple platforms, or
specifying that a report exclude items with zero usage to keep the
report size smaller.”

“Both the core SUSHI schema and the COUNTER-SUSHI schema have been
updated to version 1.7 of SUSHI to match the revised standard,” states
Marie Kennedy, Serials & Electronic Resources Librarian, Loyola
Marymount University, and Co-chair of the SUSHI Standing Committee.
“The SUSHI Standing Committee is also responsible for updating
COUNTER-related schemas; the COUNTER-SUSHI schema, the COUNTER schema,
and the COUNTER data element values have been updated to support
COUNTER Release 4.1. Additionally, the SUSHI website has new sample
reports in COUNTER Release 4 formats, updates to some of the SUSHI
Harvester tools to allow the user to select “4” as the COUNTER
Release, and Server Registry updates to display known COUNTER 4
support.”

“SUSHI has become a widely adopted NISO standard, but continuous
maintenance is required to keep it up to date,” said Todd Carpenter,
NISO Executive Director. “The SUSHI Standing Committee actively
maintains the standard to address any reported implementation issues
or new COUNTER Releases, and to consider feature suggestions. This
latest revision is an excellent example of how the Standing Committee
has updated the standard to provide requested functionality.”

The revised SUSHI standard and extensive supporting tools and
documentation are available on the NISO SUSHI website at:
www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi/

Cynthia Hodgson
Technical Editor / Consultant
National Information Standards Organization
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301-654-2512