The FREYA team has taken forward a conversation that has been developing over several years amongst persistent identifier (PID) users and providers: the idea that these critical research information infrastructures could be better supported by a coordinated community. A ‘federation’ of PID providers and users, spanning other research infrastructures, funders and policy makers, and the wide research community was mooted in January 2020. A project was commissioned to scope this potential ‘PID Federation’, undertaken between June and September 2020. This report outlines that project and summarises its key recommendations.

The inaugural NISO Plus conference took place in Baltimore, MD on February 23-25, 2020. Following the merger of NFAIS and NISO in 2019, the goal was to combine the thought leadership tradition of the former NFAIS conference with the hands-on practicality of NISO. The conference brought together around 250 professionals from across the information community to focus on shared challenges and opportunities through a combination of presentations and in-depth discussions, culminating in concrete next steps for NISO and its community. Download the full report from Figshare.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) launched its strategic plan for July 2020 – 2023, which focuses on four key themes: Diversity and Inclusion; Trendsetting; Standards Development for Content and Technology; and Community Development. The plan takes account of NISO’s expanded membership and broader remit following its 2019 merger with NFAIS, which provides the organization with an opportunity to pursue new objectives and goals aligned with its vision of a world where all benefit from the unfettered exchange of information.

The 2020-2023 Strategic Plan can be found here.

Now that more and more organisations have chosen and implemented persistent identifiers, it is time to share use/er experiences of the organizations (as provider and maintainer of persistent identifiers) and of their online visitors (man or machine, who use persistent identifiers to get access to information or objects). The Dutch Digital Heritage Network wants to collaboratively write and publish a guide to the use of persistent identifiers in the cultural heritage sector. The PID Guide application guides you through 25 statements, helps you learn and think about important PID subjects, and guides your first steps towards selecting a PID system.

The LRM (Library Reference Model) is the latest standard to be included on the new IFLA Namespaces site. Visit the site at: https://www.iflastandards.info/lrm.html. The IFLA Namespaces is designed to promote IFLA standards using linked data and is a project from the LIDATEC subcommittee of the IFLA Committee on Standards.

Visit the site at: https://www.iflastandards.info/ and https://www.ifla.org/lidatec.

Every modern book published has an ISBN, which uniquely identifies that book, and anyone publishing a book can get an ISBN for it whether an individual or a huge publishing house. It’s a little more complex than that in practice but generally speaking it’s 1 book, 1 ISBN. Nevertheless, while most publishers stick to the rules about never reusing an ISBN, it’s apparently common knowledge in the book trade that ISBNs from old books get reused for newer books, sometimes accidentally, sometimes intentionally, and that has some tricky consequences.

DataCite is proud to announce the launch of DataCite Commons, available at https://commons.datacite.org. DataCite Commons is a discovery service that enables simple searches while giving users a comprehensive overview of connections between entities in the research landscape. This means that DataCite members registering DOIs  will have easier access to information about the use of their DOIs, and can discover and track connections between their DOIs and other entities. DataCite Commons was developed as part of the EC-funded Project Freya and will form the basis of new DataCite services.

ISNI-IA has set up two ‘consultation groups’ open to interested stakeholders in the recorded music and library sectors, and each group has established regular meetings to discuss how ISNI can best meet any sector-specific needs. The groups centre around the Registration agencies and Member organisations, but are open to others with particular interests.

In June 2020, ISNI introduced a largely rebuilt and redesigned website.

The site navigation and the way that much of ISNI’s reference material is presented were enhanced. Over the coming months more improvements are planned, such as facilitating the accessibility of the site to the visually impaired.

With 27 ISNI Registration Agencies and 26 ISNI Members at the time of writing, the usage and uptake of ISNI continues to increase, both in domains such as the library community where it has long been established and in other sectors such as the music industry and organizations active in rights management and collections.

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) Editorial Policy Committee (EPC) is a ten-member international joint committee of OCLC and ALA. Six exhibits will be discussed at the Editorial Policy Committee online meeting 142B, taking place during July 2020. You can find the text of all six proposals to revise Dewey at oc.lc/deweyexhibits.