NFAIS Releases Guiding Principles in Support of Industry Wide Collaboration on Reference Linking

Philadelphia, PA, October 3, 2003 -- NFAIS (www.nfais.org), the premier membership association for organizations that aggregate, organize and facilitate access to information, released today a set of Guiding Principles with regard to reference linking, and is encouraging all those involved in any aspect of information creation and/or distribution to provide for such a capability in their products and services.

"The organization strongly believes that industry-wide collaboration in support of reference linking is essential to managing the flow of scholarly communication," stated NFAIS President, Marjorie Hlava. "Reference linking provides a seamless navigation between bibliographic and full text databases, speeding the research process and ultimately accelerating discovery across all scholarly disciplines as well as in business."

Hlava noted that NFAIS established a Linking Committee several years ago to determine the interest of members - and their customers - in promoting information linking as an industry norm.  Interest proved to be quite high and resulted in the creation of the Guiding Principles.  Linda Beebe, Chair of the NFAIS Linking Committee, stated that "We have found that in today's electronic information environment users want and expect the capability of linking between bibliographic and full text databases, and that this expectation is reinforced when they or their organization have usage rights to both types of files.  Certainly such a capability enriches the users' search experience, and from an information provider's perspective, we believe that it enhances the value of the databases and that it will eventually increase usage."

Hlava and Beebe reported that the NFAIS Board of Directors was unanimous in its acceptance of the Guiding Principles and that individual member endorsement has been very positive.  NFAIS will continue to promote reference linking through other activities, and encourages anyone who has an interest to become actively involved in the NFAIS Information Linking Committee. 

 For more information, read the full text of the NFAIS Guiding Principles: Reference Linking available on the NFAIS Web Site. For more on the NFAIS Information Linking Committee, this page provides information.  For more information on NFAIS and its member organizations, contact Jill O'Neill, Director of Communication and Planning (jilloneill@nfais.org or (215)-893-1561)

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