For Immediate Release				Contact: Charles Wilt
May 20, 2008						Executive Director,
ALCTS
							312-280-5030
							cwilt@ala.org

Demystifying Library Standards: a NISO/ALCTS webinar

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and the Association
for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) has announced the first
in a series of webinars on standards in the library environment.

  “Demystifying Library Standards, ” which takes place 1 p.m. to 2:30 p.m.
EDT on Wednesday, June 18, will focus on placing standards in context. It
will be presented by Trisha Davis, Ohio State University, Julia Gammon,
University of Akron, Karen Wetzel, NISO, and Pamela Bluh, University of
Maryland Law School and current ALCTS President.

The speakers will address why standards are important to libraries and not
just in the traditional technical services areas. As libraries are changing
and evolving in an increasingly digital world, so are standards. This
webinar will explain how standards are critical to the developments in such
areas as e resources, user access, description and metadata, licensing and
preservation. Some specific standards, both published and forthcoming, will
be touched on as examples.  Future webinars in the series will discuss those
and other standards in more depth. Participants will learn how they can
become actively involved in standards development.

 If you want to learn how standards can provide benefits to organizations,
their users, and yourself and are involved with library technical services,
the acquisition and management of e-resources, library systems
implementation including ILS, ERMS, link resolvers, and Web interfaces,
cooperative electronic arrangements with other libraries, consortia,
content providers or long-term preservation activities, then this webinar is
for you.

The cost is just  $20 for NISO and ALCTS members and  $25 for non-members.
To register online go to: http:// www.regonline.com/ALCTS08.  For questions,
email nisohq@niso.org.

About the National Information Standards Organization (NISO)
NISO fosters the development and maintenance of standards that facilitate
the creation, persistent management and effective interchange of information
so that it can be trusted for use in research and learning. To fulfill this
mission, NISO engages 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 lifecycle of
an information standard. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by
the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). More information about
NISO is available on its website: www.niso.org.

About ALCTS
The Association for Library Collections & Technical Services (ALCTS) is the
national association for information providers who work in collections and
technical services, such as acquisitions, cataloging, collection
development, preservation and continuing resources in digital and print
formats.

ALCTS is a division of the American Library Association.

********************************

Pamela Bluh

President, Association for Library Collections & Technical Services
(ALCTS) a division of the American Library Association

and

Associate Director for Technical
Services & Administration
Thurgood Marshall Law Library
University of Maryland
School of Law
501 West Fayette Street
Baltimore, MD 21201-1768

410-706-2736
410-706-2372 FAX
pbluh@umaryland.edu