[Sigia-l] government acronyms format

[Franciel Azpurua]

All,

I work for the Southern Appalachian Information Node (SAIN, @
sain.nbii.gov), one of the National Biological Information
Infrastructure (NBII, see www.nbii.gov) nodes, most of the 'nodes' are
gateways to regional biological (biodiversity, ecology, etc)
information. As part of our work we also create metadata records for
many data sets and web sites that are produced by government
agencies.----Sorry for the long story but I promise I am going somewhere
with this. 

We are trying to develop a common vocabulary for the nodes and one of
the issues is the common representation of government acronyms within
the record (for example, if the creator of a web site is the USGS, how
do we represent the acronym? U.S.G.S? USGS? US Geological Survey?). 

Do any of you know about an official (or de facto) standard list for the
representation of government acronyms?

Thanks,

Franciel Azpurua-Linares
Knowledge Manager / IA
Southern Appalachian Information Node (SAIN)-NBII
122 S. Jefferson Cir., Oak Ridge TN 37830
Phone (865) 481-0388 .x 116 & Fax (865) 481-0390