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The objective of OSI conformance testing is to provide a standardized and rigorous means of determining the extent to which a specific implementation conforms to an OSI protocol specification. As part of its ILL Implementation Program, the National Library of Canada has developed a test system and service for the interlibrary loan (ILL) protocol using the ISO standard methodology for conformance testing (ISO 9656). Development of test suites, conformance testing tools, and conformance testing services are presented. The article also discusses related topics such as interoperability testing, arbitration testing, and international harmonization of conformance testing.

This special “theme” issue of Library Hi Tech is devoted to Open Systems Interconnection. The editor is Ray Denenberg, of the Library of Congress. Eleven articles cover the basic OSI platform, applications, support areas, and implementation. The basic OSI platform consists of protocols for the seven layers, including support for file transfer and message handling. Three articles describe network applications and the corresponding OSI services and protocols. “Information Retrieval as a Network Application” describes the ANSI Z39.50 protocol. Another article describes the interlibrary loan protocol, which incorporates the sequences of messages that occur in distributed interlibrary loan transactions. An article about electronic data interchange describes the edi conceptual model being developed by ISO, and its relationship to OSI. Network management and directory services are two of the most important OSI support areas; individual articles cover these two topics. Implementation topics include profiles, testing, and products.

In September 1990, the U.S. Department of Education's Library Technology and Cooperation Grants Program awarded a three‐year grant to the Florida Center for Library Automation (FCLA), an agency of the Florida State University System, to develop software adhering to the ANSI Z39.50 Information Retrieval protocol standard. The Z39.50 software was to operate over the Open Systems Interconnect (OSI) communications protocols and be integrated with FCLA's NOTIS system, which is shared by all nine state universities in Florida. In order to test the correctness of its Z39.50 software, FCLA sought out other library software developers who would be willing to develop Z39.50 systems of their own. As part of this process, FCLA helped to found the Z39.50 Implementors' Group (ZIG), which has since gone on to improve the standard and promote Z39.50 implementations throughout much of the North American library systems marketplace. Early on in the project, it became apparent that TCP/IP would be a more heavily used communications vehicle for Z39.50 messages than OSI. FCLA expanded its design to include TCP/IP and, by the end of the grant in September 1993, will have a working Z39.50 system that can communicate over both OSI and TCP/IP networks.