The September ATG is in the mail and we had to cut the following Rumors -- So, here they are on the ATG News Channel instead!

Plus the DEADLINE for the Early Bird Registration to the Charleston Conference is September 26!!! Hurry and register!

In case you haven't seen, some big news at NISO. They have received two new proposed work items. The first is to develop best practices for Physical Delivery of Library Items and the second on formally standardizing the NLM DTD markup for journals. More information on both is at www.niso.org.

I know. I know. Sometimes Standards are boring but not when so many important people are involved! And what helps cooperation and connectivity better? Listen up! Our input is needed. That’s you and you and you over there! Todd Carpenter’s column is about the mandatory e-only deposit proposal by the U.S. Copyright office. The deadline for submitting comments to the Copyright Office has passed but the larger issues surrounding implem=ntation will take some time to work out. See this issue, p.00.

More about NISO and SERU! The Collection Management and Development Section (CMDS) of the Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has announced Judy Luther , president of Informed Strategies and Selden Lamoureux , electronic resources librarian at North Carolina State University libraries, as winners of the Coutts Award for Innovation in Electronic Resources Management. The award recognizes significant and innovative contributions to electronic collections management and development practice. The recipients each receive a $1,000 award generously donated by Coutts Information Services and a citation. Judy Luther and Selden Lamoureux were instrumental in developing SERU: A Shared Electronic Resource Understanding, currently a recommended practice of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO). They brought together librarians, publishers and subscription agents to address the labor-intensive process of negotiating licenses for electronic resources, a process that has increasingly overwhelmed both libraries and publishers. SERU offers a congenial and painless method for achieving a mutual understanding between publishers and libraries. With the potential for drastically reducing the amount of time and money it takes to bring resources to users, SERU is a significant step forward in the electronic resource acquisition process. Libraries and publishers can sign on to the SERU registry, which now includes more than 70 libraries and more than 25 publishers.

Another NISO initiative. NISO and OCLC announce the publication of a white paper on Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow, written by consultant Judy Luther (President, Informed Strategies), that analyzes the current state of metadata creation, exchange, and use throughout the book supply chain. With the number of book formats multiplying and the amount of digital content growing rapidly, the metadata required to support the discovery, sale, and use of content by a global audience is increasing exponentially. Through interviews with over 30 industry representatives, Luther has created a book metadata exchange map illustrating the workflow and metadata exchange and has identified opportunities for eliminating redundancies and making the entire process more economical. The white paper was commissioned by NISO and OCLC as a follow-up to the Symposium for Publishers and Librarians held by OCLC on March 18-19, 2009 to discuss book metadata. Both organizations share the vision of an environment where data can be exchanged seamlessly between different systems and both are focused on reducing the costs of this exchange for all participants in the supply chain of data and content. NISO and OCLC plan to hold ongoing events to continue the dialog among publishers, librarians, and metadata suppliers. Streamlining Book Metadata Workflow is available on the NISO Website.
www.niso.org/publications/white_papers/
www.oclc.org/publisher-symposium/