The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded the National Information
Standards Organization a grant to support the encoding of a collection of
template licenses for e-resources into the ONIX for Publications Licenses
(ONIX-PL) format. The encodings will be deposited into the GOKb and KB+
knowledgebase for free distribution to the library, publishing, and library
systems community. The deposited encodings--made available under a Creative
Commons Public Domain (CC-0) license--will allow libraries that license
electronic content to import the template licenses into their own electronic
resource management systems for further local customization to match their
negotiated license and implementation. The project will also fund publicly
available training resources that will inform community members on how to
use those encodings for their own purposes.

JISC Collections, a division of the UK's Joint Information Systems Committee
(JISC) that manages electronic content acquisitions for member institutions
of higher learning in the UK, has already encoded all of the licenses for
JISC Collections-subscribed content and deposited them in their
KnowledgeBase Plus (KB+) database. While KB+ has proven a useful tool for
institutions in the UK, it has not moved beyond this venue because the
encodings produced by the JISC Collections are restricted to JISC members'
usage. To encourage ONIX-PL adoption and the use of encoded licenses, JISC
Collections provided additional funding to support the project and provide
training in the encoding format and the ONIX-PL Editing software.

"The Global Open Knowledgebase (GOKb) is an element of the larger Kuali OLE
initiative to provide open source management systems to the library and
academic communities," explains Nettie Lagace, NISO's Associate Director for
Programs. "Now that the GOKb system is rapidly advancing, there is an
opportunity to populate the system with useful library management
information, such as these template license encodings. Much like the success
that the KB+ project has had in the UK, the GOKb project has the potential
to advance the state of library encodings in the broader library community."

"NISO has contracted with Selden Lamoureux to obtain the template licenses,
encode them in ONIX-PL format, and deposit the files in the GOKb and KB+
knowledgebases," states Todd Carpenter, NISO's Executive Director. "Selden
has a long career working with electronic resource management issues,
licensing, and license encoding as Electronic Resources Librarian at both
North Carolina State University (NCSU) and at University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill. She was instrumental in developing the NISO SERU (Shared
Electronic Resource Understanding) Recommended Practice, was a key leader in
NISO's work while she was at NCSU, and served as co-chair of NISO's SERU
initiative."

"ONIX-PL is elegant but very complex, since it's designed to describe the
nuances of licenses which are extremely variable," explains Selden
Lamoureux, Principle at SDLinforms and the consultant for this project. "The
use of the ONIX-PL standard to encode e-resource licenses has suffered from
a 'Catch-22' situation. Publishers and librarians have little incentive to
invest the time and effort to become proficient at ONIX-PL encoding until
there is a demonstrated benefit. Systems developers have not prioritized
implementation of ONIX-PL formatted licenses in ERM systems because there
was no source of encoded licenses to import. The creation and availability
of these template licenses will encourage the use and adoption of the
ONIX-PL standard, which, in turn, will lead to greater ease and efficiencies
in managing e-resources."

"To ensure the use of these encodings and ongoing sustainability of the
project, NISO will be producing at least four recorded 60-to-90-minute video
training sessions," states Juliana Wood, NISO Educational Programs Manager.
"The training will show librarians how to export a template license from
GOKb+, import it into an ERM system, and customize the template to match an
organization's specific license terms. Some training will be directed
towards publishers, explaining how to encode using ONIX-PL and deposit those
encodings into GOKb and KB+. Thus publishers will be able to update their
own template licenses as needed. The training materials will be available
from the NISO website under a Creative Commons Attribution license (CC BY)."

More information, including the project proposal, is available on the NISO
website at: www.niso.org/workrooms/onixpl-encoding/


Cynthia Hodgson
Technical Editor / Consultant
National Information Standards Organization
[log in to unmask]
301-654-2512

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