1. International Standard Name Identifier
ISO 27729

2. What is ISNI? A 16 digit number (ex. 1422 4586 3573 0476)
Identifies contributors to creative works, public figures, researchers, performing artists, publishers, labels, studios, etc.
Disambiguates contributors with the same or similar names
Collocates contributors whose names can be rendered in multiple ways (different character sets, transliterations, middle names/initials)
Used as a “bridge identifier”, linking together multiple data sets
Used in search/discovery applications
Used in royalty tracking

3. What does ISNI do?
Just as an ISBN uniquely identifies a book, or an ISRC uniquely identifies a recording, ISNI uniquely identifies an author.
ISNI is part of the same family of ISO identifiers as ISRC, ISAN, ISBN, ISSN, and DOI.

4. Who is ISNI? Founding members: Registration Agencies: OCLC
Proquest/Bowker
BnF (National Library of France)
British Library
CISAC
IFRRO (reproducing rights federation)
Registration Agencies:
Ringgold (for academic institutions)
National libraries of Luxembourg, France, Netherlands, Korea, New Zealand
Numerical Gurus/ISNI-US (for US-based media, music, and publishing)
Iconoclaste (for French-Canadian music)
Electre (for French-language applications)

5. Who is using ISNI? Wikipedia Musicbrainz TGiT (music tagging service)
BnF
ORCID
Ebsco
Macmillan
Harvard Library (and other university libraries worldwide)
National libraries worldwide

6. Why should I get an ISNI?
Identifiers increase discoverability in search results (see identifiers-and-linked-data )
ISNI refers to you no matter if your name is rendered in English, French, Arabic, Japanese, Sanskrit, Russian, Hebrew or any other language (or character set)
ISNI distinguishes you from other individuals who have the same or a similar name
Complying with ISO identifier schemas confers both authoritative- ness and uniqueness, qualities that search engines value

7. Show me an example
A common name, disabiguated, with various non-English renderings

8. Show me an example
An individual who has created works across various media (music, books)

9. Show me an example
Disambiguating identical names shared by multiple people

10. What do I use it for? Submit in ONIX to your trading partners
Publish on your website
Include with metadata about your books
Use in your Wikipedia entry
Include in profiles (LinkedIn, Publishers Marketplace, etc.)

11. As an individual, how do I get one?
Go to
Fill out the form and submit
ISNIs are $25, billed via PayPal

12. As a publisher, how do I get ISNIs for my authors?
Go to for rates on bulk registrations
and we will send you onboarding documents and final pricing
Then we work together to get your data into the submission format for bulk ISNI assignment

13. Questions?