International Standard Name Identifier

Overview

International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) "is a draft ISO Standard (ISO 27729) whose scope is the identification of Public Identities of parties: that is, the identities used publicly by parties involved throughout the media content industries in the creation, production, management, and content distribution chains." [1]

It is the result of the former project International Standard Party Identifier, having changed name and scope of itself. Furthermore in a 2008 ISMN manual "International Standard Name Identifier" is related to object, not party nor name identification.

As the result of that, the project will not lead to a replacement for the current IPI because an IPI identifies a party not one of the names of that party.

"An ISNI is made up of 16 decimal digits, the last one being a check character." (Yes they write character, see http://www.isni.org/)

Example: ISNI 1422 4586 3573 0476

FAQ: "An ISNI is made up of 16 digits, the last character being a check character. The check character may be either a decimal digit or the character “X”."

FAQ [2]: Public identities are identified by the following metadata elements:

• Name of the Public identity
• Date and place of birth and or death (or registration and dissolution for legal entities)
• Class and Roles as defined by the RA. Classes defines the repertoire (such as Musical, Audio-Visual, Literary,..) and Roles can be Author, Performer, Publisher,..
• Title of reference to a creation
• A URI (or URL) providing a link to more detailed information about the Public Identity.

Usage

Since 2014-08-03 the tango.info http interface supports linking by ISNI.

Database

• ISNI DB

2008 ISNI definition by ISMN

ISNI is on the top of the ISO system to identify texts, recordings and audiovisual works. [3] p.36

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISNI

• ISNI International Standard Name Identifier
  • ISWC International Standard Musical Work Code (e.g. T-037.008.639-7)
    • ISRC International Standard Recording Code* (e.g. AR-F04-02-00386)
    • ISMN International Standard Music Number (GTIN-13 starting with 9790)*
  • ISTC International Standard Text Code
    • ISBN International Standard Book Number (GTIN-13 starting with 978 or 979)*
    • ISSN International Standard Serial Number (GTIN-13 starting with 977)*
  • ISAN International Standard Audiovisual Number* (ISAN 0000-0001-8947-0000-8-0000-0000-D)

These identifiers marked with * relate to URN, NBN and DOI.