NISO publishes maintenance revisions of Dublin Core and SUSHI standards

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has published maintenance revisions of two widely-used standards: the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (ANSI/NISO Z39.85-2012) and The Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol (ANSI/NISO Z39.93-2013).

According to NISO, both standards were revised to make very minor updates. The Dublin Core standard defines 15 metadata elements for resource description in a cross-disciplinary information environment and is used as the basis for most metadata standards.

'The DCMI Usage Board approved a change to the usage comment for the "subject" element to eliminate some ambiguity with the "coverage" element,' explained Thomas Baker, chief information officer for the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, the maintenance agency for the Dublin Core standard. 'The new version of the ANSI/NISO standard corresponds to version 1.1 of the specification on the DCMI website.'

The SUSHI Protocol defines an automated request and response model for the harvesting of electronic resource usage data, and is required for conformance with the COUNTER Code of Practice.

'The SUSHI standing committee initiated this revision of the standard to make two minor updates,' said Oliver Pesch, chief strategist for EBSCO Information Services. 'An additional error code was added and the appendix about security considerations was updated to reflect technology changes and experience gained since the initial implementation of the SUSHI protocol.'