International Standard Name Identifier ISO 27729
What is ISNI? A 16 digit number (ex. 1422 4586 3573 0476) Identifies contributors to creative works, public figures, researchers, performing artists, publishers, labels, studios, etc. Disambiguates contributors with the same or similar names Collocates contributors whose names can be rendered in multiple ways (different character sets, transliterations, middle names/initials) Used as a “bridge identifier”, linking together multiple data sets Used in search/discovery applications Used in royalty tracking
What does ISNI do? Just as an ISBN uniquely identifies a book, or an ISRC uniquely identifies a recording, ISNI uniquely identifies an author. ISNI is part of the same family of ISO identifiers as ISRC, ISAN, ISBN, ISSN, and DOI.
Who is ISNI? Founding members: Registration Agencies: OCLC Proquest/Bowker BnF (National Library of France) British Library CISAC IFRRO (reproducing rights federation) Registration Agencies: Ringgold (for academic institutions) National libraries of Luxembourg, France, Netherlands, Korea, New Zealand Numerical Gurus/ISNI-US (for US-based media, music, and publishing) Iconoclaste (for French-Canadian music) Electre (for French-language applications)
Who is using ISNI? Wikipedia Musicbrainz TGiT (music tagging service) BnF ORCID Ebsco Macmillan Harvard Library (and other university libraries worldwide) National libraries worldwide
Why should I get an ISNI? Identifiers increase discoverability in search results (see https://numericalgurus.com/2016/02/17/some-logic-around-search- identifiers-and-linked-data ) ISNI refers to you no matter if your name is rendered in English, French, Arabic, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, Hebrew or any other language (or character set) ISNI distinguishes you from other individuals who have the same or a similar name Complying with ISO identifier schemas confers both authoritative- ness and uniqueness, qualities that search engines value
Show me an example A common name, disabiguated, with various non-English renderings
Show me an example An individual who has created works across various media (music, books)
Show me an example Disambiguating identical names shared by multiple people
What do I use it for? Submit in ONIX to your trading partners Publish on your website Include with metadata about your books Use in your Wikipedia entry Include in profiles (LinkedIn, Publishers Marketplace, etc.)
As an individual, how do I get one? Go to https://isni-us.com/registration/ Fill out the form and submit ISNIs are $25, billed via PayPal
As a publisher, how do I get ISNIs for my authors? Go to https://isni-us.com/bulk-registration/ for rates on bulk registrations Email info@isni-us.com and we will send you onboarding documents and final pricing Then we work together to get your data into the submission format for bulk ISNI assignment
Questions? info@isni-us.com ljndawson@gmail.com