HELLO, MY NAME IS ISNI

Identifiers serve as short hand for the metadata that differentiate one identity from another. The idea of a simple unique identifier that everyone in the world could use to identify the same person, corporate body, or similar entity has been proposed many times during the last 30 years. Finally, an international standard for an International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) has been approved to respond to this need. ISNI has been designed as a bridge between existing proprietary right holder identification systems, such as the Interested Party Identifier, and resource discovery tools, such as the Virtual International Authority File. ISNI cannot be administered in the same way as other resource-oriented identifiers such as the ISBN, where publishers are pre-allocated ranges of identifiers which they progressively apply to their new publications. In order for ISNI to reach its potential, industry-wide use is a key factor for encouraging adoption by research communities and internet databases generally.