The Summer is now (long) gone and we find ourselves in a new phase of work in relation to following up the recommendations of the National Monograph Strategy (NMS). Working closely with RLUK and SCONUL we’ve had a lot of discussion with a variety of stakeholders, including librarians, publishers, collecting agencies, service providers. We now need to move decisively to implement solutions in the area of monographs (as well as other types of academic books).
To reflect this, we have changed the title of this blog (and have also taken the opportunity to apply the prevailing Jisc branding). We want to keep the connection going with all of the valuable work that was done under the banner of the NMS and so the content of this blog will continue to feature all the posts that set out the wide-ranging discussion that got us to the present point. So in that sense, (as the previous post claims) the NMS is still ‘alive and well’. However, there is now less need to reference the overarching strategy and the Roadmap and more urgency to design and implement specific user and customer-led solutions.
We have convened a group to steer and oversee another phase of work and the name of the group indicates the provenance of the discussion that brought it into being. The Bibliographic Data Oversight Group (BIBDOG) has a core initial membership featuring representatives from Jisc, the British Library, RLUK and SCONUL. The formation of this group was one of the key recommendations from a recent Jisc-commissioned report that has helped to define next steps, particularly in relation to the development of a ‘Monobase’ which was a central concept of the NMS. There is a two page summary of the report with some reflections and next proposed steps.
The core BIBDOG group will be discussing the scope of its role and the ideal shape of its membership but it seems likely that it will be the governance and steering mechanism for pursuing the sorts of solutions that the NMS proposed.