Clifford Lynch
Executive Director
Coalition for Networked Information
James P. Michalko
President
Research Libraries Group (RLG)
Lorcan Dempsey
Vice President of Research
Online Computer Library Center (OCLC)
Standards are an essential, but often unacknowledged, part of the infrastructure upon which digital content projects depend. The nature of the standards process has changed radically in recent years. This session will provide an opportunity for a CNI community discussion of the implications of these changes. As a point of departure, we’ll describe the results of two efforts. The first is a review of the future prospects and directions of the National Information Standards Organization (NISO), which was chaired by Clifford Lynch. (The report, along with a response by the NISO board, should be publicly available by the time of the CNI meeting or shortly thereafter). The second is the outcomes of a meeting jointly sponsored by CNI, RLG, OCLC and ALA, which examined emerging standards development initiatives that have developed outside the traditional framework, and their implications for the established system of standards development.
