It was founded in 1939 as the Z39 Committee, chaired from 1963-1977 by Jerrold Orne,[3] incorporated as a not-for-profit education association in 1983, and assumed its current name in 1984.
[7] In February 2019, NISO announced plans to merge with the National Federation of Advanced Information Services (NFAIS) in July 2019.
NISO is designated by ANSI to represent U.S. interests to the International Organization for Standardization's Technical Committee 46 (Information and Documentation), all of its subcommittees, as well as the ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 Subcommittee 34 - Document description and processing languages (JTC 1/SC 34).
In addition to formal standards, NISO also publishes recommended practices, technical reports and other consensus documents, and offers continuing education for librarians and information professionals.
Information Standards Quarterly (ISQ), NISO's magazine, has been available online as open access since 2011.