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Karen,

To be clear, it's not that NISO (and ISO) more appropriate than other fora for the development of library standards. NISO and ISO ARE the places--and historically have been--where library standards are created, managed and promoted.   This is particularly true from the perspective of existing standards that are being discussed as being inadequate for their designated use.  If this is the case, than those standards need to be revised.  Beyond LC's leadership there doesn't appear to be a valid reason that such development should take place outside of existing structures for consensus development.

And I should also note, the point of my note wasn't that NISO specifically should necessarily be the forum for all of this work. This is where Leif and I are in complete agreement in the note he sent out to this this morning.  If we are going to revise the standards for bibliographic information distribution, let's do so in the existing bodies where those standards are managed, be that ISO or NISO.  

LC and others will play critical roles in that development, no question, but it should take place within the structure of open standards development, in keeping with US Standards Strategy, which proscribes public/private partnerships to develop consensus standards and should govern LCs actions in standards development.  

Todd Carpenter
Managing Director, NISO

On Nov 2, 2011, at 3:20 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:

> Sorry to repeat this to so many lists, but the most recent NISO newsletter:
> 
> http://www.niso.org/publications/newsline/2011/newslinenov2011.html
> 
> makes the case that NISO may be the more appropriate body for the development of the future data format for libraries. Quoting from the message by Todd Carpenter:
> 
> "The MARC standards office at LC is adeptly led and they have the best of intentions, with a goal of trying to represent and serve all that use this important format. However, there is a fine line between leadership and control. Hopefully, LC is willing to lead while letting the broader community control, as messy as that process might be.
> 
> The process for moving MARC into today's information environment is important, as noted above. Wouldn't the process be better served by utilizing the existing and open standards development processes already in place that have served our community so well in so many areas?"
> 
> I had been about to post a response to the plan suggesting that there are a number of non-library standards bodies that would have a lot to contribute: in particular, W3C would be important, since LC feels that RDF (a W3C standard) should be used (and I believe that library data is a good test case for the Semantic Web standards that exist today). NISO by its nature covers a broader constituency than LC, and, most importantly, is the venue that gathers together the vendors that serve libraries and create library systems.
> 
> No standards process is perfect, and none are particularly rapid. Broad participation and the widest variety of use cases for the data will assure an outcome that serves the greatest number of potential users.
> 
> kc
> 
> -- 
> Karen Coyle
> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
> ph: 1-510-540-7596
> m: 1-510-435-8234
> skype: kcoylenet

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Todd A.  Carpenter
Managing Director

National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
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