The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has announced the publication of a new Recommended Practice: Institutional Identification: Identifying Organizations in the Information Supply Chain. This Recommended Practice describes the work done by the NISO Institutional Identifier (I²) Working Group to define the requirements for a standard identifier for institutional identification in the supply chain. It also provides background on the collaboration agreement between the NISO I² Working Group and the International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) International Agency to use the ISNI standard (ISO 27729) and the ISNI-IA's infrastructure for institutional identification, rather than publish a separate standard for institutions.
According to Grace Agnew, Associate University Librarian, Digital Library Systems, Rutgers University Libraries, and Co-chair of the I² Working Group, the I² Working Group did extensive community needs assessment with the publishing, library, and repository use sectors. Based on this input, the Working Group developed a minimum set of metadata elements needed to uniquely and unambiguously identify an organisation engaged in a digital information workflow. This metadata was later harmonised with that of the ISNI standard to define the final set of elements.
The Institutional Identification: Identifying Organizations in the Information Supply Chain Recommended Practice is available for free download from the NISO I² workroom webpage: www.niso.org/workrooms/i2.
