The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) voting members have approved a new Open Discovery Initiative work item to develop standards and recommended practices for next generation library discovery services.
Using an aggregated index search of a wide range of resources, licensed and free, from multiple providers, these discovery services have the ability to deliver more sophisticated services with instant performance, compared to the federated search techniques previously used.
With this initiative, NISO seeks to bring together the stakeholders in open discovery -libraries, information providers and discovery providers - to develop consensus standards or recommended practices on how to make these services more effective for all involved, and ultimately, for the end user. According to Todd Carpenter, NISO Managing Director, other areas of interest for the new Open Discovery Initiative may include a standard exchange of data describing what rights to the content apply within the discovery service and a standard approach to exchanging data in support of usage reports.
