International Standards

As a global information infrastructure takes shape it is critical that national information standards are compatible with international norms. NISO is a leader in shaping the international standards for our industry. NISO is active in international standards development through the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and is assigned by ANSI to represent U.S. interests in the work of ISO Technical Committee 46 on Information and Documentation.

NISO is a Participating member of five TC 46 groups:

SC 4 Computer Applications in Information and Documentation:

Developing the ISO equivalent standard to Z39.50 and related protocols, character set standards, data elements for library automation, and standards for electronic publishing, including ISO 12083. NISO is also the secretariat of SC 4.

SC 8 on Statistics:

Developing international standards for library statistics, library performance indicators, and statistics for book publishing.

SC 9 Presentation, Identification, and Description of Documents:

international standards for indexing, thesaurus construction, and bibliographic description

SC 10 Physical Keeping of Documents:

standards for preservation and conservation, including paper permanence, binding, and storage conditions.

WG 2 Country Coding of Country Names and Related Entities:

managing the ISO standard for country codes, ISO 3166

NISO Voting Members are invited to participate in the review of the draft standards developed by TC 46 and serve as members of the U.S. delegation to TC 46 meetings.