The International ISTC Agency, the official Registration Authority for the International Standard Text Code (ISTC), has appointed Bowker and Nielsen Book as ISTC registration agencies. These agencies will now be authorised to assign ISTCs on behalf of publishers, authors and content owners.
An approved ISO standard (ISO 21047), the ISTC provides a means of uniquely and persistently identifying textual works in information systems. It facilitates the exchange of information about such works between publishers, authors and authors associations, collective management organisations, libraries, search engines and others on an international level.
Authors, rights-holders and others interested in ISTC are encouraged to participate in pilot programmes offered by both Bowker and Nielsen that will provide free registration of ISTCs on a semi-limited basis through May 2009. Within these programmes, participants are encouraged to exchange required meta-data about their works and groupings of works that are intended for ISTC assignment, for which selected portions shall be validated for ISTC assignments for free during the pilot program period.
