The NISO SUSHI Standing Advisory Committee has announced the approval and final release of the schemas (and related files) providing full support of Release 3 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for Journals and Databases. Notable in the latest release is the requirement that content providers implement the Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) as a means of delivering their reports. With the schemas now finalised, content providers can expect to set their development agendas for implementing SUSHI.
The SUSHI standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.93 - 2007) defines an automated request and response model for the harvesting of electronic resource usage data utilising a web services framework. Designed as a generalised protocol extensible to a variety of usage reports, it also contains an extension designed specifically to work with COUNTER usage reports. COUNTER reports have become a mainstay of collection analysis for many libraries. SUSHI serves to automate the time consuming and error prone process of manually running, retrieving and loading these reports.
NISO's SUSHI Standard Advisory Committee, formed last summer to maintain the standard, has used community feedback to identify additional needs for implementation and to examine the standard for areas that may need updating or improving. In addition to addressing the needs of the schemas, the Committee's charge includes the goal of making SUSHI easier for implementers to understand and work with. As part of that effort, the schemas have been annotated with descriptions and examples for key elements, and the website (www.niso.org/workrooms/sushi) now includes clear graphical representations of the schemas. In addition, the FAQs on the site are being updated and include sections specifically for librarians and developers.
Also on the site is a link to the draft, 'How to Start Building a SUSHI Service.' This work in progress by Thomas Barker, Software Engineer, IT and Digital Development at the University of Pennsylvania Library, is seen as a valuable tool for those interested in getting started with building a client.
Launched in 2002, COUNTER is designed to help librarians and publishers in the recording and exchange of usage statistics for electronic resources. By following COUNTER's Code of Practice, vendors can provide libraries with data using standardised formats and data elements. The SUSHI protocol is a SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) request/response Web services 'wrapper' for the XML version of COUNTER reports.
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