National Information Standards Organization

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO; ) is a United States non-profit standards organization that develops, maintains and publishes technical standards related to publishing, bibliographic and library applications. It was founded in 1939 as the Z39 Committee, incorporated as a not-for-profit education association in 1983, and assumed its current name in 1984. Organization NISO offers two membership categories, "voting members" and "library standards alliance". In January 2016, the "voting members" included 77 large corporations, mostly publishers, and large library organizations such as the American Library Association. Voting members elect Directors and comment and vote on standards. The "Library Standards Alliance" included 135 members, primarily university and large public libraries. Library members receive free access to NISO webinars. Todd Carpenter was appointed Executive Director of NISO in 2006. In February 2019, NISO announced plans to merge with the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) in July 2019. In 2020, NISO launched the NISO Plus conference, continuing the tradition of the NFAIS annual conference. Work NISO is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and develops technical standards used in publishing, libraries, media, and other content distribution. NISO develops both formal U.S National Standards as well as recommended practices. It also hosts a variety of educational and training programs for the community. NISO is designated by ANSI to represent U.S. interests to the International Organization for Standardization's Technical Committee 46 (Information and Documentation), all of its subcommittees, as well as the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 Subcommittee 34 - Document description and processing languages (JTC 1/SC 34). In 2008, NISO was appointed Secretariat on behalf of ANSI for the TC 46 Subcommittee 9 (TC 46/SC 9) - Identification and Description.