About the ISNI International Agency
The ISNI International Agency:
I. Our Vision
ISNI is the globally recognized and adopted standard approved by ISO for the unique identification of the public identities across all fields of creative activity.
II. Mission Statement
The mission of the ISNI International Agency (ISNI-IA) is to create and diffuse neutral, sharable, unique and disambiguated identification (identifiers and metadata) of Public Identities that can be used as a bridge-identifier by contributors to the ISNI database and system including libraries, rights management and trade organizations, and shared openly, effectively and globally. Our articles of association can be found here.
III. Core Values
The ISNI-IA Core Values are:
• ISNI-IA is committed to implementing and maintaining the ISNI Standard
• ISNI-IA is committed to developing the ISNI database and the ISNI-IA service in innovative ways consistent with maintaining the integrity of the ISNI standard
• ISNI-IA is committed to maintaining the reliability of the data provided by the ISNI database
• ISNI-IA is committed to providing an excellent service to Registration Agencies (RAGs) and user communities and to being open and responsive to their needs
• ISNI-IA’s approach to its stakeholders and customers will be based on honesty, integrity, impartiality and offering a transparent and cost-effective service
• ISNI-IA works to achieve cooperation agreements with stakeholders where appropriate
• ISNI-IA is committed to facilitating widespread diffusion of ISNI identifiers and core metadata
• ISNI-IA is committed to providing tools that offer easy access to the public’s request for ISNIs at an affordable cost consistent with the RAND (Reasonable And Non Discriminatory) principle
IV. Purpose of ISNI and ISNI-IA
Purpose of ISNI :
ISNI is an ISO certified global standard for identifying the millions of contributors to creative works and those active in their distribution, including writers, artists, creators, performers, researchers, producers, publishers, aggregators, and more. It is part of a family of international standard identifiers that includes identifiers of works, recordings, products and right holders in all repertoires, e.g. DOI, ISAN, ISBN, ISRC, ISSN, ISTC, and ISWC. ISNI can be assigned to all parties that create, produce, manage, distribute or feature in creative content including natural, legal, or fictional parties, and is essential to those working in the creative industries for quick, accurate and easy identification.
Inter alia, ISNI will serve the following key purposes:
1. Act as a bridge-identifier across multiple domains for all sectors
2. Facilitate reliable royalty management services across all repertoires and throughout the value chain.
3. Allow for more efficient discovery services spanning all domains.
4. Provide an infrastructure for academics and researchers to establish their identity for the purpose of reputation management and communication of their output.
5. Provide an infrastructure for organization identification to smooth and improve the functioning of the information supply chain.
By enabling faster rights clearance, ISNI will facilitate licensing of online services and legal access by the public to the content it wants. It will contribute to the evolution of library catalogues and to the diversification of library data use and reuse and will be an important component of Europeana, The European Library, and the ARROW project.
By sharing their data resources, ISNI participants including libraries, rights management and trade organisations will be co-operating to achieve high quality data and at the same time realise processing efficiencies.
By identifying contributors in all forms of content that are critical to researchers including: videos, recordings, novels, dissertations, journal articles, monographs, datasets, and working papers, ISNI will not only help the researcher, but will offer clear benefits to stakeholders in the research community, including libraries, publishers, granting agencies and universities.
By unambiguously identifying organisations in the information supply chain, it will enable more efficient diffusion of and linking to electronic and non-electronic works, thus facilitating retrieval and access.
Purpose of ISNI-IA
The ISNI-IA is charged with continuously administering, governing and developing the ISNI database and services in response to the needs and requirements of all ISNI stakeholders. The not-for-profit organisation represents more than 300 rights management organisations and 26,000 libraries worldwide and aims to maintain its position as the leading entity for the identification of public identities across all fields of creative activities.
V. Official Documents and Agreements
