World Registry

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Revision as of 05:24, 22 December 2018 by Admin (talk | contribs) (Public Identities)
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This section should contain some information about existing international and national registers of

TWG also intends to create registers of

Books and publishers

The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is 13-digit (formerly 9-digit in 1966-70; 10-digit in 1970-2006) number for books published since the standard was introduced. Includes EAN-prefix (3 digits: 978 or 979); country or language area code (1 to 5 digits); publisher code (1 to 6 digits); publication number (1 to 6 digits); check digit (one).

Serials (Periodicals)

The International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) is an 8-digit code used to identify unambiguously newspapers, journals, magazines and periodicals of all kinds and on all media–print and digital. Started 1975.

Public Identities

The International Standard Name Identifier (ISNI) is 16-digit identifier of publicly known natural persons, legal entities (mostly editorial) and even fictional characters. Mostly used by contributors to creative works and those active in their distribution, including researchers, inventors, writers, artists, visual creators, performers, producers, publishers, aggregators etc. Created in 2012 by librarians and therefore contains mostly names related to books.

  • ISNI Database by ISNI International Agency - over 10 million identities, including 9.4 million individuals (since the time of Diogenes of Sinope) and 789,630 organisations as of 22.11.2018. Try to find yourself there. If you fail - write a book, send it to Library of Congress and wait... Or you can register your identity for some $30 in any local registration agency - usually a role in intellectual property creation is required.
  • ISNI Wikipedia Article

If you already have personal ISN, you can convert it to personal 13-digit barcode. The last issued ISNI number as of 22.12.2018 is 0000-0004-7407-1282 and while it always begins with 0000, next eleven digits (except check digit, the last in row) are enough for 100.000.000.000 (100 bn) persons. Your (unofficial) EAN-code will start from "2" (reserved 'country code' - not in use), eleven digits of personal number (5th to 15th in ISNI) and check digit.

For example, current Acting President of the World has ISNI 0000-0003-7830-2693. So, his personal number is 00037830269. We input 200037830269 at https://www.gs1.ch/en/home/offer/barcode/check-digit-calculator-and-ean-13-barcode-generator and receive check digit 8 and excellent barcode icon.

Legal Entities

Worldwide Legal Entities Register is being built under G20 Cannes Summit decision (2011) by Global Legal Entity Identifier Foundation (GLEIF). Now (November 2018) the LEI (Legal Entity Identifier) database includes about 1.3 million entities. Registration is voluntary, but in some countries LEI number is required for securities trade.


There still exist some private initiatives, e.g. Dun & Bradstreet’s Data Universal Numbering System (D-U-N-S Number). It started in 1963 and now includes more than 300 million businesses worldwide.


Banks