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The ISNI database is not an authority file. Its sole goal is the creation of unique identifiers for public identities (the names by which persons and corporate bodies are publicly known) that are involved anywhere in the life cycle of intellectual and artistic content. (See ISNI FAQ) Therefore, many of the use cases that govern our library authority records (e.g., establishing consistent access points for use in bibliographic descriptions) do not apply.
Scope
The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) is a standard that uniquely identifies public identities involved throughout the chain of creation, production, management and distribution of intellectual or artistic contents. It identifies the public identities of parties such as authors, composers, cartographers, performers, academic and scientific authors, researchers, or publishers. (ISNI FAQ)
The database includes persons as well as fictional and legendary characters and non-human personages when they feature in creative content.
Organizations (corporate bodies) are in scope for ISNI, but meeting names (conferences) are not. Even though ISNI records may be found for some meeting names, new records for meetings should not be created pending discussions between ISNI and OCLC.
Is there a preferred form of name?
As opposed to traditional library authority work, ISNI does not require participants to follow a single standard. The group of contributors is very diverse and includes many non-library sources. Creating an ISNI is solely focused on identification. There is no "official" form of name. Names do not need to be unique and are not based on usage. However, it is recommended to use a full form of the name (e.g., forename instead of just an initial, but of course, persons known by their initials, such as T.S. Eliot and D.H. Lawrence, should be recorded with and without initials). A new ISNI record will be matched by an algorithm against the existing database to avoid duplicates, and a fuller form of name is helpful in this process.
All variants of a name that identify a publicidentity are recorded in the same record. While within the system the each ISNI contributor codes one name as in the "name" (field 700) and all others as "variant names" (field 400), no “preferred” name is indicated in the public view. All names are shown there in alphabetical order.
How much information should be included?
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ISNIs describe public identities, but pseudonyms are considered separate public identities. In this case, separate ISNIs are established for each just as is done in the LC/PCC Name Authority File Each public identity relating to a given party shall have separate ISNI. (ISNI FAQ) Records for multiple public identities of the same person are linked, but the links may be suppressed on request.