PRESS RELEASE : Swets and SUSHI take first ground-breaking steps

[Damian Leslie <dleslie@nl.swets.com>]

Seems as this is related to the SUSHI project that NISO announced last week
I thought this may be of interest to some Lib-license members.

Yours,

Damian

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PRESS RELEASE

Lisse, The Netherlands
November 22nd, 2005

Swets and SUSHI take first ground-breaking steps

Swets is delighted to announce that, working as part of the Standardized
Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI), it is the first subscription
agent to have successfully completed integration tests of their Electronic
Resource Management statistics with two ILS vendors, Innovative Interfaces
and Ex Libris. The Statistics transferred in these tests were all compliant
with the internationally recognized COUNTER format.

SUSHI is an initiative created by the National Information Standards
Organization (NISO) that aims to solve the challenge of how librarians can
track usage of online content. Although many content providers supply usage
data, libraries have discovered that receiving statistics on a
provider-by-provider basis is extremely time consuming and very costly to
administrate. SUSHI aims to provide a protocol that will enable libraries to
retrieve and analyze that information in a standard data container.

John Martin, Swets' Chief Commercial Officer stated, "The quick and
successful completion of these tests with Innovative and Ex Libris clearly
show our dedication to the SUSHI initiative. Swets is delighted to be
playing a part in this project as we are constantly searching for ways in
which we can help our customers manage their information resources in a
simple and streamlined manner."


About Swets Information Services

Swets is the world's leading subscription services company, connecting the
supply and demand chain that exists between publishers and institutions,
libraries and information centers. The company provides services for
customers from academic, government, corporate and medical institutions.
Swets has been operating successfully for over 100 years. The company has
offices in over 20 countries, servicing clients and publishers from over 160
nations worldwide. Those offices manage more than 1.8 million subscriptions,
with half of those related to electronic subscriptions, between some 65,000
publishers and over 60,000 clients, including one in three Fortune 500
companies. Swets is the only subscription agent to be ISO 9001:2000
certified on a global basis, which serves as a significant endorsement of
its ability to provide clients and publishers with the kind of speedy,
reliable and efficient service methods they expect to receive from an
intermediary.

Media Contact
Damian Leslie
Swets Information Services
P.O. Box 830
2160 SZ Lisse, The Netherlands
T: +31 (0)252 435 189
F: +31 (0)252 415 888
E: press@nl.swets.com <mailto:press@nl.swets.com>
www.swets.com


About Innovative Interfaces

For over 25 years, Innovative Interfaces has dedicated its energies to
meeting the needs of libraries and the challenges of library automation.
Core to this mission are trusted products including the Millennium
integrated library management system, INN-Reach next-generation resource
sharing, the Symposia digital repository, and Electronic Resource
Management. Today, thousands of libraries of all types in over 40 countries
rely on Innovative's products, services, and support. The company is located
in Emeryville, California with offices around the world.


About Ex Libris

Ex Libris is a leading worldwide developer and provider of high-performance
applications for libraries, information centers, and researchers.  ALEPH,
the Ex Libris integrated library solution has been installed at over 1250
sites in 57 countries. MetaLib(r), the information portal for library
collections and SFX, the content-sensitive linking solution for
heterogeneous electronic resources in the scholarly information environment,
have collectively been purchased by more than 900 institutions in 36
countries. DigiTool, a solution for the construction of digital collections,
and Verde, the new electronic resource management (ERM) system, round out
the Ex Libris product suite. Visit www.exlibrisgroup.com

About NISO

NISO, a non-profit association accredited by the American National Standards
Institute (ANSI), identifies, develops, maintains and publishes technical
standards to manage information in our changing and ever-more digital
environment. NISO standards apply both traditional and new technologies to
the full range of information-related needs, including retrieval,
re-purposing, storage, metadata and preservation. NISO Standards,
information about NISO's activities and membership are featured on the NISO
website http://www.niso.org.

About COUNTER

COUNTER (Counting Online Usage of NeTworked Electronic Resources) is a
multi-agency initiative whose objective is to develop a set of
internationally accepted, extendible Codes of Practice that will allow the
usage of online information products and services to be measured more
consistently.  Release 1 of the COUNTER Code of Practice for journals and
databases was published in January 2003 and is now widely implemented.
COUNTER is actively supported by the international community of librarians
and publishers, and by their professional organizations.