Baltimore, MD, and Drexel Hill, PA, October 5, 2021: The Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration & Innovation (PALCI) and the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) today announced a consortium agreement to provide NISO Library Standards Alliance (LSA) membership to all PALCI members for an initial period of three years, beginning January 2022. The agreement will provide library staff at 73 PALCI member libraries with full LSA membership benefits, including: free access to NISO’s educational webinar program; unlimited participation in NISO Working Groups/Standing Committees; and discounted registration for all non-webinar events, including the annual NISO Plus conference. As lead organization for the consortium, PALCI will continue to be a NISO Voting Member, and will provide a central point of contact between NISO and the PALCI member organizations. Lehigh University, another PALCI member who had previously joined NISO, will also continue independently as a full NISO Voting Member. “PALCI libraries are thrilled to extend our engagement with NISO through this agreement. NISO is a natural partner for us as we implement and advocate for standards-based library infrastructure and approaches that will enhance library collaboration and innovation,” said Jill Morris, PALCI Executive Director. “PALCI’s diverse membership is highly dependent on system interoperability. The important work NISO does to promote mutually accepted information exchange standards is vital to our consortium and to our industry.” “We are delighted to welcome all of PALCI’s members to the NISO community,” said Todd A. Carpenter, NISO Executive Director. “Several PALCI libraries, as well as PALCI itself, have been involved in our work over the years, and this new agreement will broaden and deepen that engagement. It will also increase the diversity of LSA member voices, enabling us to better ensure that our standards and other efforts reflect and meet the needs of a wider range of libraries.” For more information about this announcement, please contact [log in to unmask] or [log in to unmask] *About NISO* Based in Baltimore, MD, NISO’s mission is to build knowledge, foster discussion, and advance authoritative standards development through collaboration among the cultural, scholarly, scientific, and professional communities. To fulfill this mission, NISO engages with 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 information standards. NISO is a not-for-profit association accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). For more information, visit the NISO website (https://niso.org) or contact us at [log in to unmask] *About PALCI*PALCI is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit membership organization, which originated in 1996 as the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc., a grassroots federation of 35 academic libraries in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. Known today as the Partnership for Academic Library Collaboration and Innovation, the PALCI membership now consists of 74 academic and research libraries in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and West Virginia. PALCI’s mission is to enable cost-effective and sustainable access to information resources and services for academic libraries in Pennsylvania and surrounding states. PALCI is well known for its highly-regarded EZBorrow consortial ILL service. PALCI members partner to serve over 800,000 students, faculty, and staff, with a particular focus on collaborative collections programs, resource sharing services, and innovative technology projects and approaches to library services. For more information contact [log in to unmask] or visit http://www.palci.org. NISO 3600 Clipper Mill Road, Suite 302 Baltimore, MD 21211 Phone: 301-654-2512 E-mail: [log in to unmask] Email secured by Check Point