From: Cynthia Hodgson <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Thu, 18 Apr 2013 14:29:44 -0400

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the National Information
Standards Organization a grant to support the encoding of a collection
of template licenses for e-resources into the ONIX for Publications
Licenses (ONIX-PL) format. The encodings will be deposited into the
GOKb and KB+ knowledgebase for free distribution to the library,
publishing, and library systems community. The deposited
encodings—made available under a Creative Commons Public Domain (CC-0)
license—will allow libraries that license electronic content to import
the template licenses into their own electronic resource management
systems for further local customization to match their negotiated
license and implementation. The project will also fund publicly
available training resources that will inform community members on how
to use those encodings for their own purposes.

JISC Collections, a division of the UK’s Joint Information Systems
Committee (JISC) that manages electronic content acquisitions for
member institutions of higher learning in the UK, has already encoded
all of the licenses for JISC Collections-subscribed content and
deposited them in their KnowledgeBase Plus (KB+) database. While KB+
has proven a useful tool for institutions in the UK, it has not moved
beyond this venue because the encodings produced by the JISC
Collections are restricted to JISC members’ usage. To encourage
ONIX-PL adoption and the use of encoded licenses, JISC Collections
provided additional funding to support the project and provide
training in the encoding format and the ONIX-PL Editing software.

“The Global Open Knowledgebase (GOKb) is an element of the larger
Kuali OLE initiative to provide open source management systems to the
library and academic communities,” explains Nettie Lagace, NISO’s
Associate Director for Programs. “Now that the GOKb system is rapidly
advancing, there is an opportunity to populate the system with useful
library management information, such as these template license
encodings. Much like the success that the KB+ project has had in the
UK, the GOKb project has the potential to advance the state of library
encodings in the broader library community.”

“NISO has contracted with Selden Lamoureux to obtain the template
licenses, encode them in ONIX-PL format, and deposit the files in the
GOKb and KB+ knowledgebases,” states Todd Carpenter, NISO’s Executive
Director. “Selden has a long career working with electronic resource
management issues, licensing, and license encoding as Electronic
Resources Librarian at both North Carolina State University (NCSU) and
at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She was instrumental
in developing the NISO SERU (Shared Electronic Resource Understanding)
Recommended Practice, was a key leader in NISO’s work while she was at
NCSU, and served as co-chair of NISO’s SERU initiative.”

“ONIX-PL is elegant but very complex, since it’s designed to describe
the nuances of licenses which are extremely variable,” explains Selden
Lamoureux, Principle at SDLinforms and the consultant for this
project. “The use of the ONIX-PL standard to encode e-resource
licenses has suffered from a ‘Catch-22’ situation. Publishers and
librarians have little incentive to invest the time and effort to
become proficient at ONIX-PL encoding until there is a demonstrated
benefit. Systems developers have not prioritized implementation of
ONIX-PL formatted licenses in ERM systems because there was no source
of encoded licenses to import. The creation and availability of these
template licenses will encourage the use and adoption of the ONIX-PL
standard, which, in turn, will lead to greater ease and efficiencies
in managing e-resources.”

“To ensure the use of these encodings and ongoing sustainability of
the project, NISO will be producing at least four recorded
60-to-90-minute video training sessions,” states Juliana Wood, NISO
Educational Programs Manager. “The training will show librarians how
to export a template license from GOKb+, import it into an ERM system,
and customize the template to match an organization’s specific license
terms. Some training will be directed towards publishers, explaining
how to encode using ONIX-PL and deposit those encodings into GOKb and
KB+. Thus publishers will be able to update their own template
licenses as needed. The training materials will be available from the
NISO website under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY).”

More information, including the project proposal, is available on the
NISO website at: www.niso.org/workrooms/onixpl-encoding/

Cynthia Hodgson
Technical Editor / Consultant
National Information Standards Organization
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