Boston Library Consortium (BLC) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) have announced an agreement to provide NISO Library Standards Alliance (LSA) membership to all BLC members.
Membership in NISO gives BLC a voice in developing the standards and recommended practices that ensure the free exchange of information across the scholarly communications community.
“BLC is delighted to join the NISO community,” said Charlie Barlow, BLC’s executive director. “LSA membership empowers colleagues across our entire membership network to benefit from a robust suite of professional development offerings and influence future directions in library practice.”
Benefits for BLC Members
The agreement will extend full NISO LSA membership benefits to BLC’s member libraries, including:
- Free registration (for all staff) for NISO’s monthly webinar series
- Unlimited participation in NISO Working Groups and Standing Committees
- Discounted registration for all non-webinar events, including the annual NISO Plus conference
NISO Voting Membership
BLC also joins NISO as a Voting Member, which gives BLC the opportunity to influence the direction of technological advances in information management by driving standards and best practices in the information community.
As a Voting Member, BLC may comment and vote on proposed standards and recommended practice projects as well as vote in NISO Board elections.
Informational Session: Making the Most of Your NISO Membership
To learn more about NISO member benefits, NISO and BLC are hosting an informational session on Tuesday, January 30, at 11 a.m. Register here!
NISO Webinar Series
Sign-on information for the monthly webinars will be sent by BLC roughly two business days before the event. Registration through NISO’s site is not required, but you are welcome to register if you’d like to receive this information directly from NISO. You can access a list of all upcoming events (with registration links) on the NISO event page.
News and Announcements from NISO
You can sign up to get announcements and news directly from NISO. You can select the type(s) of announcements you’re interested in (choose one or as many as you’d like):
- NISO Announcements: Press releases and other official announcements about all aspects of NISO work
- NISO I/O: Our monthly Information Organized newsletter on all things standards/information-related
- Standards Updates: News about NISO’s standards program and working groups, including NISO'S ISO work
- Educational Programs, including webinars and training series
- NISO Plus: Updates on NISO'S annual conference(s)
NISO Plus Conference
Finally, NISO would like to extend its early bird registration discount for NISO Plus 2024 (February 13–14, 2024) in Baltimore, MD. When registering, enter NP24_LSACons in the promotional code box and select the “NISO LSA Consortia member special rate” ticket type that appears to get the best rate.
Note that NISO is also hosting a pre-conference, a 101-style introduction to AI and machine learning in scholarly communications, on February 12. Tickets for this four-hour event, sold separately, are $100.
“I’m so pleased to welcome the Boston Library Consortium and its member libraries to NISO,” added Todd Carpenter, NISO’s executive director. “BLC has been a leading innovator in resource sharing, collective collection management, and preservation across its community. Many of these efforts are based upon consistent, standards-based business processes among BLC member libraries. We’re looking forward to benefiting from their perspectives as we work to develop authoritative standards for the information community.”
About NISO
Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO’s mission is to build knowledge, foster discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages with libraries, publishers, information aggregators, and other organizations that support learning, research, and scholarship through the creation, organization, management, and curation of knowledge. NISO works with intersecting communities of interest and across the entire life cycle of information standards. NISO is a nonprofit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). niso.org