IPTC: external controlled vocabularies

International Press
Telecommunications Council

Directory of IPTC-external Controlled Vocabularies

The IPTC creates and maintains a rich set of Controlled Vocabularies for categorising news and other news-media related content. You can find more about them - branded as IPTC NewsCodes - on the main IPTC website.

The IPTC is aware that Controlled Vocabularies (CV) created by other bodies are widely used for news exchange too. As the IPTC does not intend to duplicate existing work - which would result in having to maintain CVs with actually the same scope in parallel - the IPTC recommends to use these non-IPTC controlled vocabularies below.

The IPTC explicity acknowledges all Intellectual Property associated with these CVs and emphasizes that it only recommends their use but does not assert or claim any ownership or rights regarding these CVs.

ANPA 1312 Category Codes: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/anpa1312-category/)
Body owning this CV: NAA as succcessor of ANPA - www.naa.org
Description of this CV by the owner (ANPA 1312 specs, section J): The category code of the story may be any of the single alpha characters from the vocabulary.
Homepage for this CV: http://www.naa.org/topics-and-tools/miscellaneous/wire-service-transmission-guidelines.aspx

ANPA 1312 Priority Codes: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/anpa1312-priority/)
Body owning this CV: NAA as succcessor of ANPA - www.naa.org
Description of this CV by the owner (ANPA 1312 specs, section H): The priority of a transmission is designated by any of the single alpha characters from the vocabulary.
Homepage for this CV: http://www.naa.org/topics-and-tools/miscellaneous/wire-service-transmission-guidelines.aspx

ANPA 1312 Service Level Codes: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/anpa1312-servicelevel/)
Body owning this CV: NAA as succcessor of ANPA - www.naa.org
Description of this CV by the owner (ANPA 1312 specs, section B): The wire designator code will be an upper- or lowercase single alpha character that identifies the basic nature of the service.
Homepage for this CV: http://www.naa.org/topics-and-tools/miscellaneous/wire-service-transmission-guidelines.aspx

ANPA 1312 Version Codes: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/anpa1312-version/)
Body owning this CV: NAA as succcessor of ANPA - www.naa.org
Description of this CV by the owner (ANPA 1312 specs, section O): The information in this field is designed to enable newspaper systems to distinguish new leads, inserts, corrections and adds, so that the process of automatically assembling separately transmitted portions of a story is not limited to putting the latest material at the bottom of the file.
Homepage for this CV: http://www.naa.org/topics-and-tools/miscellaneous/wire-service-transmission-guidelines.aspx

ISIN = International Securities Identifying Number (based on ISO 6166): (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/isin/)
Body owning this CV: Not a single body, by the specifications of the ISIN the NSINs (National Securities Identifying Number) is assigned by a local national body for each country.
Body owning the format of the ISIN codes: ISO - International Organization for Standardization - www.iso.ch

ISO 2-letter country name codes - ISO 3166-1 alpha-2: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/iso3166-1a2/)
Body owning this CV: ISO - International Organization for Standardization - www.iso.ch
Description of this CV by the owner: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part 1: Country codes. The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes.
Homepage for this CV: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes/iso_3166_code_lists.htm

ISO 3-letter country name codes - ISO 3166-1 alpha-3: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/iso3166-1a3/)
Body owning this CV: ISO - International Organization for Standardization - www.iso.ch
Description of this CV by the owner: Codes for the representation of names of countries and their subdivisions -- Part 1: Country codes. The short country names from ISO 3166-1 and the alpha-2 codes are made available by ISO at no charge for internal use and non-commercial purposes.
Note by the IPTC: the alpha-3 codes (= 3 letter codes) are not freely available, only by the ISO documents you can buy from their shop on the ISO web site.
Homepage for this CV: http://www.iso.org/iso/country_codes

ISO currency codes - ISO 4217 - alpha codes: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/iso4217a/)
ISO currency codes - ISO 4217 - numeric codes: (Scheme URI: http://cvx.iptc.org/iso4217n/)
Body owning this CV: ISO - International Organization for Standardization - www.iso.ch
Description of this CV by the owner: This International Standard specifies the structure for a three-letter alphabetic code and an equivalent three-digit numeric code for the representation of currencies and funds. For those currencies having minor units, it also shows the decimal relationship between such units and the currency itself.
Homepage for this CV: on the ISO website:
http://www.iso.org/iso/support/faqs/faqs_widely_used_standards/widely_used_standards_other/currency_codes/currency_codes_list-1.htm

Note for G2 users:

The corresponding aliases for the Scheme-URIs above are defined in the G2 Catalog file.

Contact the IPTC at:

Web: www.iptc.org
Email: office@iptc.org
Postal mail: 20 Garrick Street, London WC2E 9BT, United Kingdom

The IPTC is registered as a private company limited-by-guarantee at the Companies House for England. The registered name is "Comité International des Télécommunications de Presse", the registration number is 1010968 and the registered office is 10 Portland Business Centre, Datchet, Slough, Berks, SL3 9EG. The company is not registered for VAT.