The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) announces the formal publication of a new update to the JATS: Journal Article Tag Suite standard (ANSI/NISO Z39.96-2019). The purpose of JATS is to define a suite of XML elements and attributes describing the content of metadata and journal articles while using a common format that enables the interchange and exchange of that content. The added elements and modifications made in 2019 allow greater flexibility in existing models while enabling support for emerging publishing practices. The published version of the Standard may be found at https://www.niso.org/publications/z3996-2019-jats.  Non-normative and supporting materials, including schemas and Tag Library documents, may be found at: https://jats.nlm.nih.gov.

In their article, the three authors affiliated with ORCID share their view of persistent identifiers (PIDs) as foundational elements in the overall research information infrastructure. PIDs enable entities to be uniquely identified and connected, to create reliable links between them.

Cataloging Norms Interest Group offers a forum for the exploration, communication, and exchange of ideas and best practices on the dynamics of cataloging/metadata norms and workflows in the hybrid environment.

Please email proposal abstracts to co-chairs Paul Heyde (pch36@case.edu) and Rachel Turner (turnerr@binghamton.edu) by Tuesday, April 2nd, 2018.

Recent months have seen further significant recruitment of new Members and Registration Agencies of  ISNI International Agency (ISNI-IA). This brings the total membership to about 42 organizations and continues to broaden the base of ISNI participation. Many of these registration agencies are national libraries which specialise in registering contributor names from their particular country or region as part of their normal cataloguing processes, and some specialise in a particular industry sector or only register their own identities and business partners. Others are commercial organisations which may charge a fee for assigning an ISNI.

The RDA Steering Committee has announced several changes to its membership. Kathy Glennan began a four-year term as RSC Chair on January 1, 2019. Gordon Dunsire will continue in the role of RSC liaison to the IFLA Permanent UNIMARC Committee, in a two-year term that concludes at the end of December 2020.

The protocol between the RSC and the IFLA Permanent UNIMARC Committee (RSC/Chair/22) has been agreed to by both parties.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) have announced a proposed combination, designed to better serve their members, during a time of rapid change. The combined association will be more effective and influential within the community of publishers, information distributors, libraries, government agencies, and technology partners who make up the membership.

Alice Meadows, the Director of Communications for ORCID, gives an uncomprehensive account and her own thoughts about the PIDapalooza event. Here are some of the themes that emerged from the sessions she attended. The presentations are available on PIDapalooza 2019 repository.

At the ALA Midwinter Meeting held in Seattle in January 2019, members of the RDA Steering Committee hosted this three hour event thanks to the Committee on Cataloging: Description and Access. The presentations and subsequent question and answers sessions were recorded, and the recordings have been posted on the RDA YouTube channel.

The BIBFRAME Update highlighted expansion activities. Expanding the Library of Congress Pilot 2 during 2019 requires that BIBFRAME be convertible to MARC and the BIBFRAME system be more efficient. Philip Schreur described the exciting expansion that Stanford is leading under a Mellon grant. European activity and the European BIBFRAME Workshop were the focus for Reinhold Heuvelmann from the Deutsche Bibliothek. And OCLC provided an update on their BIBFRAME explorations. The presentations are online.

This discussion paper was submitted at the MARC Advisory Committee meeting at the Midwinter meeting of the American Library Association in January 2019. This paper proposes improved ways of indicating open and restricted access, as well as license information, for remote online resources through coordinated changes to the MARC 21 fields 506 (Restrictions on Access Note), 540 (Terms Governing Use and Reproduction Note), and 856 (Electronic Location and Access).