From: Lormand, Saundra (sklorma@sandia.gov)
Date: Wed Nov 03 2004 - 13:30:22 PST
Subject: SLA to drop organizational memberships Date: Wed, 3 Nov 2004 14:30:22 -0700 Message-ID: <B3C96748EBF3194EA5C8C48CAB5192A11241F2@ES23SNLNT.srn.sandia.gov> From: "Lormand, Saundra" <sklorma@sandia.gov>
I received the message below via the SLA Information Technology Division
Listserv that I subscribe to.
It appears that SLA is planning to drop its membership in CNI
(Coalition for Networked Information) http://www.cni.org/ and NISO
(National Information Standards Organization) http://www.niso.org/ for
budgetary reasons. This concerns me because it will result in a lack of
involvement, visibility, and input for special libraries into two
international groups that set standards and explore technological and
philosophical issues that affect our library operations and profession.
Further, as I recall, one of our association goals is to promote
awareness of special libraries--generally and in the larger library
community. Such a move does not support this goal.
As you can see below, the Technical Standards Committee of SLA is
dismayed by the move. I must say I agree. If you feel likewise, I would
encourage you to contact SLA Headquarters and SLA Board members and
express your feelings.
Saundra Lormand
Group Leader
Technical Library, MS 9211
Sandia National Laboratories
P.O. Box 969
Livermore, CA 94550
sklorma@sandia.gov
(925)294-2525
Subject: RE: SLA drops Organizational memberships (fwd)
From: Margie Hlava <mhlava@accessinn.com>
Date: Tue, 02 Nov 2004 10:49:23 -0700
Reply-To: "SLA Information Technology Division" <sla-dite@lists.sla.org>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Letter to Dan Trefethen as the liaison to the SLA Standards committee.
The
letter from Dan to the committee is at the end of this email. Only IFLA
is
being retained by SLA this year. .........if you feel strongly about it
please pass it to your divisions or write directly to the members of the
SLA Board and Headquarters staff.
Dear Daniel,
We, the members of the Technical Standards Committee, were shocked by
the
news that the SLA board had decided to drop its NISO membership. We
strongly urge the board to reconsider and restore SLA's organizational
membership to NISO.
The standards related to library and information technologies touch the
work
of information professionals every day. One of the great benefits as a
member of SLA is being able to understand the changes, directions, and
development of information standards from standards communities. As an
institutional member of NISO, SLA members are able to express their
concerns, ideas, and suggestions regarding technical standards through
the
Technical Standards Committee. We have been one of the strongest
voices on
the NISO system and regularly comment or vote on things effecting what
our
members do on a daily basis. Frequently SLA was the only voice
representing
special librarians when the standards were developed and reviewed. We
were
also one of the very few voices that voted NO or sent strong comments to
the
standard drafts which would have had deep impacts on the detailed
working
processes in small or specialized libraries.
The following is a list of activities of this committee, representing
the
involvement of SLA in NISO's standards activities during the last three
years:
Comments and voting activities:
. ISO 21047 draft standard on Textual Work Code (ISTC)
. Z39.86 File Specifications for the Digital Talking Book
. Z39.83 Circulation Interchange Part 1: Protocol (NCIP)
. Z39.83 Circulation Interchange Part 2: Protocol Implementation
Profile
Question /Answer Transaction Protocol (QATP)
. Z39.89 The U.S. National Z39.50 Profile for Library
Applications
. ISO 3297 International Standard Serial Numbering (ISSN)
. ISO 2108 International Standard Book Numbering (ISBN)
. Z39.47 Extended Latin Alphabet Coded Character Set for
Bibliographic
Use(ANSEL)
. Z39.29 Bibliographic References Standard
. ANSI/NISO Z39.19-1993. Guidelines for the Construction, Format
and
Management of Monolingual Thesauri (Reaffirmation)
. Licensing of ISO coding standards Networked Reference Protocol
. NISO's RFP Writer's Guide to Standards for Library Systems
. ANSI/NISO Z39.71 - 1999 Holdings Statements for Bibliographic
Items
. NISO Z39.20 - 1999 Criteria for Price Indexes for Print Library
Materials
. Z39.88-200x The OpenURL Framework for Context-Sensitive Services
. ISO 3279 International Standard Serial Numbering,
. NISO Z39.7-200X: Information Services and Use: Metrics and
statistics for
libraries and information providers-- Data Dictionary
. ISO standard International Standard Book Number, DIS 2108
Without NISO membership, SLA would not be able to participate these
activities; SLA members would lose one of the most important benefits
for
joining SLA. As one of the members indicated in the recent email, "if
they
don't think being part of NISO, which negotiates thesaurus, search, ISO,
Z39
standards plus more, maybe we shouldn't belong to SLA. Geez, who can
carry
our water to these fora? Not the ALA certainly."
Through NISO, SLA is also involved in the ISO TC46 Experts Group which
include the following subgroups:
- ISO/TC 46/WG 2 - Coding of country names and related entities
- ISO/TC 46/SC 4 - Computer applications in information and
documentation
- ISO/TC 46/SC 8 - Statistics and performance evaluation
- ISO/TC 46/SC 9 - Presentation, Identification, and Description of
Documents
- ISO/TC 46/SC 10 - Physical keeping of documents
- ISO/TC 46/SC 11 - Archives/records management
Each year we also introduce new standards at our popular "Standards
Updates
and Special Librarians" in the annual SLA conferences, which have
received
more and more attention.
If SLA faces financial difficulties and needs to reduce the benefits it
has
promised and offered to its members, it is necessary to ask the opinions
of
the entire membership, and explain all the options.
We strongly urge you pass our requests to the Board, and hope the Board
take
back the decision of dropping SLA's NISO membership.
Technical Standards Committee
Foster Zhang, Chair
Karen Buxton
Krista Harney
Donna Goda
J. David Martin
Jill Sherman
Marcia Lei Zeng
Past Chair of Technical Standards Committee
Margie Hlava
-----Original Message-----
From: Trefethen, Daniel B [mailto:daniel.b.trefethen@boeing.com]
Sent: Thursday, October 28, 2004 2:40 PM
To: krista.harney@ey.com; fjzhang@stanford.edu; karen.buxton@pnl.gov;
jdsher01@qwise.louisville.edu; j-martin@uiowa.edu; dgoda@mail.ucf.edu;
mzeng@kent.edu
Subject: SLA drops Organizational memberships
Members of the SLA Technical Standards Committee:
As your Board liaison, I am sorry to inform you that due to budget cuts,
SLA's FY 2005 budget does not include funding for membership in such
organizations as NISO and CNI. The only paid membership we will be
retaining is in IFLA. The current memberships will expire at the end of
this year.
The FY 2005 budget was a particularly challenging one, and many items
(and positions) remained unfunded. We have expectations for a better
budget year in FY 2006, and may be able to reconsider some of our
memberships at that time.
Your mission remains unchanged in monitoring, reviewing and commenting
upon standards that affect special libraries and information centers,
and serving to assist SLA members in understanding the changing world of
technical standards that affect library and information services. For
instance, your work in assembling the upcoming Toronto session on
Unicode is an excellent example of fulfilling your mission.
If you have any questions about this budget action, please let me know.
Dan Trefethen
Boeing - Future Combat Systems
P.O. Box 3707, M/C 84-74
Seattle, WA 98124-2207
phone: 253-657-1103
fax: 253-773-7721
daniel.b.trefethen@boeing.com
Saundra Lormand
Group Leader
Technical Library, MS 9211
Sandia National Laboratories
P.O. Box 969
Livermore, CA 94550
sklorma@sandia.gov
(925)294-2525
I don't believe in charity. I believe in solidarity. Charity is so
vertical. It goes from the top to the bottom. Solidarity is horizontal.
It respects the other person and learns from the other. I have a lot to
learn from other people.
--Eduardo Galeano
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