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, 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 2013, the "voting members" included 69 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 101 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. Gerry Grenier from IEEE is Chair of NISO in 2014-2015. Heather Reid from the Copyright Clearance Center was Chair in 2013-2014.

Standards organization

A standards organization, standards body, standards developing organization (SDO), or standards setting organization (SSO) is an organization whose primary activities are developing, coordinating, promulgating, revising, amending, reissuing, interpreting, or otherwise producing technical standards that are intended to address the needs of some relatively wide base of affected adopters.

Most standards are voluntary in the sense that they are offered for adoption by people or industry without being mandated in law. Some standards become mandatory when they are adopted by regulators as legal requirements in particular domains.

The term formal standard refers specifically to a specification that has been approved by a standards setting organization. The term de jure standard refers to a standard mandated by legal requirements or refers generally to any formal standard. In contrast, the term de facto standard refers to a specification (or protocol or technology) that has achieved widespread use and acceptance – often without being approved by any standards organization (or receiving such approval only after it already has achieved widespread use). Examples of de facto standards that were not approved by any standards organizations (or at least not approved until after they were in widespread de facto use) include the Hayes command set developed by Hayes, Apple's TrueType font design and the PCL protocol used by Hewlett-Packard in the computer printers they produced.

American National Standards Institute

The American National Standards Institute (ANSI, /ˈænsiː/ AN-see) is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States. The organization also coordinates U.S. standards with international standards so that American products can be used worldwide.

ANSI accredits standards that are developed by representatives of other standards organizations, government agencies, consumer groups, companies, and others. These standards ensure that the characteristics and performance of products are consistent, that people use the same definitions and terms, and that products are tested the same way. ANSI also accredits organizations that carry out product or personnel certification in accordance with requirements defined in international standards.

The organization's headquarters are in Washington, DC. ANSI's operations office is located in New York City. The ANSI annual operating budget is funded by the sale of publications, membership dues and fees, accreditation services, fee-based programs, and international standards programs.