Create & publish
Connect your catalogue.
Match versions, editions and copies across publishing partners. Keep records connected to the content they describe.
For publishers and creators →International Standard Content Code / ISO 24138:2024
Know your content wherever it goes.
Digital content gets copied, converted, resized and re-encoded. Metadata gets stripped. The International Standard Content Code (ISCC) can still identify it. A similarity-aware code, computed from the file itself.
For the creative & media industries
Built for the people who make things.
Writers, photographers, musicians, filmmakers, publishers, newsrooms. Your work travels further than you can follow it. We maintain the ISCC so it stays recognizable wherever it lands. ISO standard, open-source software, free to use, run by a non-profit.
ISCC for creators & publishers01 / How it works
Derived from the file, comparable across systems, declared when you choose
01 / Derive
Derive
Generate an ISCC from a file with open source software. The same input produces the same code, independently of who computes it.
02 / Compare
Compare
Find identical files and match related content using the ISCC without accessing the content itself. Different ISCC-UNITS reveal different kinds of similarity.
03 / Connect
Connect
Link content to records across tools, collections and organizations. A common code gives different systems a shared reference.
One file. Several perspectives.
More than an
exact match.
Description, meaning, content and the underlying data. ISCC brings multiple perspectives together, so you can explore similarities as well as identify an exact file.
Explore the ISCC-UNITS
Text
Image
Audio
VideoCASemantic-Code*MeaningEA Content-Code Perceptual and lexical structureGA Data-Code Binary similarityIA Instance-Code Exact identity
A distinct perspective per ISCC-UNIT
Semantic-Code is implemented but not yet standardized.
02 / Shared possibilities
Different worlds. Common ground.
Collect & preserve
Bring collections together.
Discover relationships across libraries, archives and museums, even when their local identifiers differ.
For cultural institutions →Build & integrate
Make your systems agree.
Add content identification to applications with open source tools, backed by an international ISO standard.
For developers ↗A shared foundation
International ISO standard.
Open by design.
ISO 24138:2024 gives content identification a common specification. The open source reference implementation makes it available to build on.
Meet the standard03 / From the community
Ideas, progress & perspectives.
From standard to ecosystem: our report to the ISO/TC 46 plenary in Milan
At the ISO/TC 46 plenary week in Milan we reported on a year of building around ISO 24138:2024: implementations for six language targets, similarity search at scale, the draft Discovery Protocol and first pilots in publishing, science and open content.
Why libraries, archives and museums should use the ISCC
Lambert Heller explores what content-derived identification makes possible for libraries, archives and museums.
NISO Introduces the Newest ISO Identifier Standard
NISO's Todd Carpenter introduces ISCC and its place in the landscape of information standards.
The ISCC Foundation
Technology for the common good.
We are an independent non-profit supporting open, interoperable content identification. Researchers, developers and people across the creative industries help turn a shared idea into useful infrastructure.