Morning folks,

The latest from the NKOS list, with apologies for cross-posting. NISO is the
U.S. eqivalent of the Bristish Standards Institute (BSI). BSI are currently
also reviewing the standard for thesaurus construction. I'm not sure if the
two initiatives are co-ordinated (but I hope they are...).

Ed

-----Original Message-----
From: Marcia Lei Zeng [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 03 April 2003 23:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: FWD: NISO Thesaurus press release


From: NISO Headquarters [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2003 12:47 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [diglib] Thesaurus press release


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact:

Pat Harris
(301) 654-2512

Email: [log in to unmask]

NISO is Developing the Next Generation of Standards for Controlled
Vocabularies and Thesauri

Bethesda, MD, USA - (April 2, 2002) - The National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) announced a new initiative to revise the leading
standard for thesaurus construction Guidelines for the Construction,
Format, and Management of Monolingual Thesauri (ANSI/NISO Z39.19).
Leading the development team is Dr. Amy Warner, principal of Lexonomy.
Grants from the H.W. Wilson Foundation, The Getty Foundation, and the
National Library of Medicine are supporting this new area of work.

"The core strength of NISO's Thesaurus guideline is that it offers a
standardized way to organize many kinds of information," noted Dr. Amy
Warner, chair of the revision team. "However, information providers face
lots of challenges today. They are serving a changing audience.
Searching and browsing of information systems are no longer limited to
information professionals-individuals of all ages, professions, and
nationalities are using search tools. Developers of Internet and
Intranet-accessible Web pages, databases, and information systems need
better metadata to support non-expert information searches, and metadata
developers are recognizing the need for incorporating controlled
vocabularies and taxonomies into their schemes."

The revised standard will:


* Reflect the ways that users search or browse, the many types of
content they will find, and the new technologies they are using.
* Address the needs of a variety of information organizations and
content- beyond the traditional abstracting and indexing services-and
add explicit examples that are relevant to business and industry.
* Introduce more user-friendly language and include the why and how
behind the key concepts and principles.

Working with Dr. Warner is an Advisory Group made up of representatives
from the project sponsors, NISO members, and other interested
organizations, including: Vivian Bliss, Microsoft; Carol Brent, ProQuest
Information and Learning; John Dickert, U.S. Department of Defense,
Defense Technical Information Center; Lynn El-Hoshy, Library of
Congress; Patricia Harpring, The Getty Foundation; Stephen Hearn,
American Library Association; Sabine Kuhn, American Chemical Society,
Chemical Abstracts Service; Pat Kuhr, H.W. Wilson; Diane McKerlie,
Consultant; Peter Morville, Consultant; Stuart Nelson, National Library
of Medicine; Diane Vizine-Goetz, OCLC; and Marcia Lei Zeng, Special
Libraries Association.  Emily Fayen is the NISO Standards Development
Committee liaison to the activity.

News on this activity is featured on the NISO website (www.niso.org):
http://www.niso.org/committees/MT-info.html


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