ISNIs

ISNIs, short for International Standard Name Identifiers, are unique numeric identifiers assigned to public identities such as persons, organizations, and other entities involved in creating, producing, or disseminating content. They are designed to disambiguate names that may be identical or similar and to facilitate linking across bibliographic, media, and rights-management databases.

Each ISNI is a 16-digit number, which may be written with spaces every four digits, for example 0000 0001 2345 6789. The last digit serves as a check digit in accordance with the ISNI standard.

ISNIs are managed by the ISNI International Agency and related organizations under ISO 27729, the official standard for the identifier. The ISNI Registry provides publicly available metadata for ISNIs and supports connections to other identity services such as ORCID, VIAF, and Wikidata.

Applications include library catalogs, academic databases, publishers, and music and film databases. ISNIs help unify credits, reduce confusion from common names, and improve metadata quality by enabling reliable linking of works to their creators or rights holders.

Limitations and governance: ISNIs identify public identities rather than individuals, and the data published about each ISNI is governed by data-sharing policies and privacy considerations. The system relies on a broad consortium of libraries, rights organizations, and publishers to maintain accuracy and open data access.