The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) is the premiere standards-issuing body for libraries, archives, and publishers (or for any entity producing, publishing, storing, or preserving information). NISO, jointly with American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is responsible for all Z39.xx standards, including such favorites as Z39.50 (Information Retrieval: Application Service Definition & Protocol Specification), Z39.66 (Durable Hardcover Binding for Books), and Z39.48 (Permanence of Paper for Publications and Documents in Libraries and Archives); recently they've produced such destined-to-become-classics as Z39.77 (Guidelines for Information About Preservation Products), Z39.85 (Dublin Core Metadata Element Set), and Z39.86 (Specifications for the Digital Talking Book). In addition to issuing formal standards, NISO also produces valuable technical reports (e.g., William K. Wilson's Environmental Guidelines for the Storage of Paper Records) and white papers (e.g., Clifford Lynch's The Case for New Economic Models to Support Standardization Efforts).
The Dublin Core Metadata Element Set
