Ten years after the publication of its Consolidated Edition, ISBD is at a crossroad. The Revision of the ISBD is taking place in a complex environment driven by diverse bibliographic and technological developments and pressing users’ needs.

There is on one hand the urgent need to extend its coverage horizontally (to a larger array of resources) and vertically (to more granular descriptions). There is on the other hand the strategic mandate to align the ISBD with the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM), to keep up with the developments in the bibliographic universe and achieve complementarity between IFLA standards. In addition there is the necessity to engage – with other cultural institutions – in the web of data and linked data and semantic web technologies.
In this session, experts of ISBD and bibliographic standards are presenting their views that are driving the transition of the ISBD. Elena Escolano Rodríguez, Head of the Central Library at the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, presented an update of ISBD as the response to the communities of users to solve their needs of information; Mikael Wetterström, Specialist in Automated Processing of Bibliographic Data at ISSN International Centre, presented the ISBD revision work done so far by the ISBD for Manifestation Task Force. Gordon Dunsire, RDA Technical Team Liaison Officer, presented the position and role of ISBD in the current bibliographic universe, including its relationship to other IFLA bibliographic standards, RDA (Resource Eescription and Access), BIBFRAME, and linked open data.

The ISSN International Centre, with academic publisher Springer Nature, has just completed constructing a new, centralized process for the assignment of ISSN to periodicals and books series published by this publisher.

Read the press release.

The National Library of the Philippines has just launched its online application system for the assignment of identifiers, i.e. ISSN, ISBN and ISMN, to publications issued on the national territory.

This system is meant to provide better services for stakeholders and publishers.

For further inquiries please visit web.nlp.gov.ph or email issn@nlp.gov.ph.

For more information, you can watch this video.

ISSN International Centre will participate in IFLA WLIC 2021.

The Marketing team will hold a gold exhibitor virtual booth accessible through the exhibitors section. The showcase page will enable delegates to network with private, direct chat functions.

The Metadata department will be represented by Mikael Wetterstöm. As a liaison officer of the ISBD Review Group, he has an active part in the ISBD for Manifestation Task Force to review ISBD in the context of alignment with IFLA LRM model. He will present the revision work done so far by the group about the evolution of the data elements.  More information on IFLA website ISBD in transition.

The Keepers Registry has registered a significant increase of periodicals archived by the Chinese National Digital Preservation Programme for Scientific Literature, NDPP.

NDPP China is funded by National Science & Technology Library placed under the umbrellla of the Ministry of Science and Technology, China.  More than 200 research and academic libraries participate in this programme, operating with multiple preserving nodes at major institutions.
NDPP strives to promote research and practice of digital resource preservation in China, and also looks forward to exchange and cooperation with international experts and institutions.

ISSN International Centre will be a Gold Exhibitor at the World Library and Information Congress.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of ISSN International Centre, presented at NASIG 2021 conference an overview of the current ISSN services, and gathered suggestions and opinions on ISSN IC 2024 Strategy.

The ISSN International Centre has set up a KBART (Knowledge Bases and Related Tools) version of the free MARC data describing ROAD records, i.e. OA scholarly resources. This data is made available on BACON and can be reused under a CC0 license. KBART is a widely-used NISO Recommended Practice that facilitates the transfer of holdings metadata from content providers to knowledge base suppliers and libraries.

You can download ROAD records as a .csv file or as a json file.

Interconnection between the major national catalogues and the possibilities it offers for bouncing between different collections and bibliographic databases are at the heart of current Abes developments in terms of access to bibliographic resources. In order to facilitate cross-over uses, the interconnection of Sudoc and BnF catalogues has been strengthened by using the ARK identifier adopted by BnF.

Since March 2021, the ISSN International Centre/CIEPS has also implemented a direct link between ISSN Portal records and Sudoc localised records, an approach based on a comparable technical principle:

It is now envisaged to create this same reverse link, i.e. from Sudoc records to those of the ISSN Portal. Insofar as the reciprocal link already exists between the records in the BnF Catalogue and those in ISSN Portal, this would further strengthen the “virtuous circle” created between the three managing bodies, all three of which are involved in the creation and improvement of reliable bibliographic data on continuing resources, resources that are complex to describe and, moreover, evolving.

The ISSN National Centre Australia hosted by the National Library of Australia has modernised its ISSN allocation service. ISSN application and enquiry forms are now required for all correspondence. View the application form and read about ISSNs.