The National Information Standards Organization (NISO; ) is a

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...

non-profit

standards organization A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary function is developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpr ...

that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing, bibliographic and

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

applications. It was founded in 1939 as the "Z39 Committee", incorporated as a not-for-profit education association in 1983, and assumed its current name in 1984.

Organization

NISO offers two membership categories, "voting members" and "library standards alliance". In January 2016, the "voting members" included 77 large corporations, mostly publishers, and large library organizations such as the

American Library Association The American Library Association (ALA) is a nonprofit organization based in the United States that promotes libraries and library education internationally. It is the oldest and largest library association in the world, with 49,727 members ...

.Member companies
". National Information Standards Organization. Retrieved March 6, 2016. Voting members elect Directors and comment and vote on standards. The "Library Standards Alliance" included 135 members, primarily university and large public libraries. Library members receive free access to NISO webinars. Todd Carpenter was appointed Executive Director of NISO in 2006. In February 2019, NISO announced plans to merge with the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) in July 2019. In 2020, NISO launched th
NISO Plus conference
continuing the tradition of the NFAIS annual conference.

Work

NISO is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and develops technical standards used in publishing, libraries, media, and other content distribution. NISO develops both formal U.S National Standards as well as recommended practices. It also hosts a variety of educational and training programs for the community. NISO is designated by ANSI to represent U.S. interests to the

International Organization for Standardization The International Organization for Standardization (ISO ) is an international standard development organization composed of representatives from the national standards organizations of member countries. Membership requirements are given in Art ...

's Technical Committee 46 (Information and Documentation), all of its subcommittees, as well as the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 Subcommittee 34 - Document description and processing languages ( JTC 1/SC 34). In 2008, NISO was appointed Secretariat on behalf of ANSI for the TC 46 Subcommittee 9 (

TC 46/SC 9 ISO/TC 46 is Technical Committee 46 of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), responsible for Information and documentation. Overview The scope of the committee is 'standardization of practices relating to libraries, documenta ...

) - Identification and Description. NISO approved standards are published by ANSI. Unlike most other ANSI standards, all of NISO standards and best practices are freely available from its web site. Designations (names) of NISO standards all start with "ANSI/NISO Z39." (read zee or zed thirty nine dot). Examples of NISO standards include: *Z39.2: Bibliographic records Information Interchange Format (IIF) encoding mostly used with

MARC standards MARC (machine-readable cataloging) standards are a set of digital formats for the description of items catalogued by libraries, such as books, DVDs, and digital resources. Computerized library catalogs and library management software need to st ...

*Z39.29: Bibliographic References; last version is Z39.29-2005 (R2010) *Z39.5: journal title abbreviations, resulting in the 1969 publication of the American National Standard for the Abbreviation of Titles of Periodicals *Z39.7: Information Services and Use: Metrics & Statistics for Libraries and Information Providers Data Dictionary * Z39.21:

International Standard Book Number The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a numeric commercial book identifier that is intended to be unique. Publishers purchase ISBNs from an affiliate of the International ISBN Agency. An ISBN is assigned to each separate edition a ...

* Z39.50: a protocol for accessing bibliographic databases *Z39.83:

NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol {{unreferenced, date=November 2012 NISO Circulation Interchange Protocol (NCIP) is a protocol that is limited to the exchange of messages between and among computer-based applications to enable them to perform functions necessary to lend and borro ...

(NCIP) for library catalogue data exchange *Z39.84:

Digital object identifier A digital object identifier (DOI) is a persistent identifier or handle used to uniquely identify various objects, standardized by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). DOIs are an implementation of the Handle System; they a ...

(DOI) *Z39.85:

Dublin Core 220px, Logo image of DCMI, which formulates Dublin Core The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen "core" elements (properties) for describing resources. This fifteen-element Dublin Core has ...

*Z39.86: Specifications for the Digital Talking Book: DAISY Digital Accessible Information SYstem * Z39.87: Technical Metadata for Digital Still Images - MIX *Z39.88:

OpenURL An OpenURL is similar to a web address, but instead of referring to a physical website, it refers to an article, book, patent, or other resource within a website. OpenURLs are similar to permalinks because they are permanently connected to a r ...

*Z39.93: Standardized Usage Statistics Harvesting Initiative (SUSHI) Protocol *Z39.96: JATS:

Journal Article Tag Suite The Journal Article Tag Suite (JATS) is an XML format used to describe scientific literature published online. It is a technical standard developed by the National Information Standards Organization (NISO) and approved by the American National S ...

*Z39.99: ResourceSync Framework Specification *Z39.102: STS: Standards Tag Suite In addition to formal standards, NISO also publishes recommended practices, technical reports and other consensus documents, and offers continuing education for librarians and information professionals. ''Information Standards Quarterly'' (''ISQ''), NISO's magazine, has been available online as open access since 2011.ISQ
". National Information Standards Organization. Retrieved May 12, 2015.

References

External links

*
National Information Standards Organization (NISO) records
at the University of Maryland Libraries {{Authority control Standards organizations in the United States Library-related organizations Publishing organizations Organizations established in 1939 Non-profit organizations based in Maryland