From: NISO <[log in to unmask]>
Date: Mon, 27 Oct 2014 15:19:12 -0400

NISO Launches Open Discovery Initiative (ODI) Standing Committee

Comments and suggestions welcome for maintenance and promotion of the
recommended practice

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is pleased to
announce the next phase for the Open Discovery Initiative, a project
that explores community interactions in the realm of indexed discovery
services. Following the working group’s recommendation to create an
ongoing standing committee as outlined in the published recommended
practice, Open Discovery Initiative: Promoting Transparency in
Discovery (NISO RP-19-2014), NISO has formed a new standing committee
reflecting a balance of stakeholders, with member representation from
content providers, discovery providers, and libraries. The ODI
Standing Committee will promote education about adoption of the ODI
Recommended Practice, provide support for content providers and
discovery providers during adoption, conduct a forum for ongoing
discussion related to all aspects of discovery platforms for all
stakeholders, and determine timing for additional actions that were
outlined in the recommended practice.

“Discovery systems are critical to the research ecosystem,” states
Laura Morse, ODI Standing Committee Co-chair and Director, Library
Systems, Harvard University. “Working with content and discovery
providers to ensure that all content, whether it is licensed or openly
available, can be discovered by library users regardless of the
institution’s choice of discovery system is core to supporting
research, teaching, and learning. The ODI Standing Committee will
build on the work of the original ODI Working Group to promote content
neutrality and the widespread adoption of all tenets of the
recommended practice by discovery service providers, content
providers, and libraries.”

“The ODI Recommended Practice provides a rich framework within which
content providers and discovery service suppliers can drive
collaborative improvements toward a smooth and comprehensive library
search experience,” states Lettie Conrad, ODI Standing Committee
Co-chair and Executive Manager, Online Products, SAGE. “We must work
together across the industry to fully realize the vision of indexed
discovery services, which is made possible by NISO’s leadership and
guidance through the standards formation process. The Standing
Committee invites suggestions from the community on how we can best
promote and enable adoption of the NISO ODI Recommended Practice.”

“Uptake of NISO’s recommendations is always aided when community
members are willing to continue working together as a Standing
Committee,” explains Nettie Lagace, Associate Director for Programs at
NISO. “As stakeholders utilize the NISO documents and discuss
potential areas of further work, the benefits of relying on a group of
their peers to educate them and provide support cannot be
underestimated. NISO is grateful to the members of the Standing
Committee for contributing their time to these ongoing efforts.”

More information about the ODI Standing Committee and the Open
Discovery Initiative: Promoting Transparency in Discovery (NISO
RP-19-2014) recommended practice are available from the Open Discovery
Initiative webpage on the NISO website at:
www.niso.org/workrooms/odi/. You may join the ODI Interest Group
e-mail list at: www.niso.org/lists/opendiscovery/. To provide input on
promotion, adoption, and maintenance of the recommended practice, send
an e-mail to [log in to unmask]

Cynthia Hodgson
Technical Editor / Consultant
National Information Standards Organization
[log in to unmask]