NISO and UKSG Announce Five New KBART Endorsements

["Cynthia Hodgson" <chodgson@niso.org>]

NISO and UKSG are pleased to announce the addition of five new 
organizations as official endorsers of the joint recommended 
practice, KBART: Knowledge Bases And Related Tools (NISO 
RP-9-2010). [Available for free download from 
http://www.niso.org/publications/rp/.] This Phase I publication, 
published in January 2010, contains practical recommendations for 
the timely exchange of accurate metadata between content 
providers and knowledge base developers.

The most recent organizations to endorse KBART are: Alexander 
Street Press; Annual Reviews; EBSCO Information Services; 
Innovative Interfaces, Inc.; and Royal Society Publishing. These 
companies join the American Institute of Physics, Ex Libris, 
OCLC, and Serials Solutions on the list of formal endorsers. All 
content providers, from major databases to small publishers, are 
encouraged to publicly endorse the KBART Recommended Practice by 
submitting a sample file to the KBART working group, at 
kbart@niso.org. Endorsement is finalized once the file's format 
and content has been reviewed and approved, and the provider has 
made it publicly available (in line with the recommendations).

Sarah Pearson, E-Resources & Serials Coordinator at the 
University of Birmingham and UKSG co-chair of the KBART Phase II 
Working Group, stated, 'The joint NISO/UKSG working group is very 
pleased that the uptake of the recommendations is gathering 
momentum, as evidenced by the growth of formal KBART 
endorsements. We have been actively working to promote the 
benefits of implementing the recommendations, and are thrilled to 
see that our message is getting through. We look forward to 
seeing more progress in the future.'

KBART has also made a contacts registry 
(http://sites.google.com/site/kbartregistry/) available for 
content providers and knowledge base developers to register their 
organization's information for downloading holdings metadata. The 
registry provides a list of contacts, URLs, and instructions 
relating to the transfer of e-resource metadata between content 
providers and link resolvers. Companies that have formally 
endorsed KBART are marked with a KBART logo on the registry.

KBART's Phase II work is underway to develop a second recommended 
practice that will build on the Phase I recommendations. 
Knowledge base providers and their customers (primarily academic 
libraries) will benefit from provision of higher quality data by 
content providers. Publishers will benefit from accurate linking 
to their content and subsequently the possibility of increased 
usage.

For more information on KBART and the current Phase II work, 
visit www.uksg.org/kbart or www.niso.org/workrooms/kbart.

Cynthia Hodgson
NISO Technical Editor Consultant
National Information Standards Organization