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.