The 48th ISSN Centre Directors’ Meeting is being held from October 23-26, 2023 in Brussels, Belgium, at the kind invitation of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek/Bibliothèque royale (KBR).

The ISSN International Centre, located in Paris, France, has put together a dense agenda of presentations that will be attended by 60 participants from various continents.

This annual meeting of ISSN National Centre Directors is an opportunity for colleagues from ISSN Network Member Countries to exchange information on their activities, foster cooperation and participate in workshops.

Training will be provided by the ISSN International Centre team in the use of its up-to-date metadata production tool which has been upgraded regularly since its launch in June 2022. This tool is the production base underlying the ISSN portal, the global index for continuing resources (https://portal.issn.org).

A warm welcome to all delegates of the ISSN Network !

Christian Schütz, Head of Collection Development and Media Acquisition, Director of the German ISSN Centre, explains the missions of the German ISSN centre, the scope of an ISSN assignment, the notion of key title and the practical usage of an ISSN.

The German National Library’s diverse areas of responsibility also include the national ISSN centre for Germany. If you need an ISSN for a continuing resource published in Germany, then the German centre is responsible. A detailed overview of all publications that can receive an ISSN can be found on the information pages of the national ISSN center for Germany. The assigned ISSN is documented in the ISSN portal, the journal database and the catalog of the German National Library together with a bibliographic description. We therefore recommend checking an ISSN in the DNB catalog: https://portal.dnb.de/ or the ISSN portal, where you can find the current bibliographic description.

At IFLA WLIC 2023 in Rotterdam, The Netherlands (21-25 August), our Sales, Marketing and Communication Team was pleased to welcome several colleagues from the ISSN Network on our booth. We had conversations about ISSN assignments and questionable journals. Our subscribers enquired about ISSN linked and the update of the ISSN Portal. Our communication focused on Keepers Registry and our new service Submit-Retrieve-Reuse. Our presentation “Using the ISSN Portal to check the Status of a library’s Journal Collections regarding Digital Preservation” is available on Zenodo (https://zenodo.org/record/8282860). We are making a significant contribution to the development of ISBD Review Group by chairing the dedicated working group. We thank all our colleagues and our customers for their continued support!

The National Diet Library, Japan, (the NDL) plans to integrate two of its current web services: the National Diet Library Online Search and Request Service (NDL Online) and the NDL Search. These two will be launched as a new NDL Search web service in January 2024.

As of today, ISSN assigned for online resources published in Japan, which have been registered and maintained by the Japanese National Centre for ISSN, are available in the bibliographic records contained in NDL Search and NDL Online. WARP (Web Archiving Project) and National Diet Library Digital Collections (Online publications) provide online journals collected by the National Diet Library based on the National Diet Library Law or permission from the publishers.

Mir@bel network and ISSN International Centre have signed a partnership in order to exchange data, enrich mutual databases with updates and new links. This will notably enable to extend the exchanges that have been set up between Abes (the French bibliographic agency for higher education), ISSN France (BnF) and Mir@bel on the assignment of eISSNs and the curation of ISSN-related data.

Morover, the video recordings of the 2023 Mir@bel network General Assembly are now online in this section Channel Canal-U:

– Le rôle du Centre International de l’ISSN et de son réseau dans le développement de la science ouverte par Gaëlle Béquet
– Où en est Mir@bel aujourd’hui ? (bilan annuel) par Sophie Fotiadi
– Mir@bel au sein de la juridiction administrative par Caroline Louati et Blandine Guérard
– Centre ISSN France, retour d’expérience d’un partenaire particulier, par Philippe Cantié
– Réutiliser les données de Mir@bel par Bernard Teissier.

DOAJ wants to help applicants submit a complete and correct application that won’t be rejected at the triage stage. One of the most common reasons for rejection at triage is that the journal’s ISSN isn’t fully registered or confirmed. To help applicants discover the status of their journal’s ISSNs, DOAJ is adding dynamic links under the ISSN fields in our form. The links will take the applicant directly to the ISSN entry in the ISSN portal. If an ISSN is provisional, the ISSN Portal will display this.

ISSN International Centre’s MARC proposal to create a new field for Cluster ISSNs​ was accepted by the MARC Advisory Committee on 28 June 2023.

Also, in June 2023, the MARC Office published the Update 36 which includes the field the ISSN International Centre requested jointly with the National Library of Finland, Field 857 for Electronic Archive Location and Access https://www.loc.gov/marc/bibliographic/bd857.html. The MARC Update 37 with the new field 023 will be released in December 2023. Initial planning for the launch of the new Cluster ISSN, the Title History ISSN or ISSN-H, has begun, and it is expected to be activated at the same time as the new ISSN Portal in the first half of next year.

The ISSN International Centre is a sponsor of the AIFBD congress, which will take place from 16 to 19 August 2023 in Brussels. The conference theme is “Access to information at the heart of development: the case for libraries and documentation centres”. Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, will deliver a presentation entitled “How to use the ISSN portal to check the conservation status of your digital journals”. The full programme is available here: https://www.aifbd.org/programme-du-congres-aifbd-2023/ .

The ISSN International Centre will exhibit at Booth n°A6 during the 88^th IFLA World Library and Information Congress. Gaelle Bequet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, will give a presentation entitled “Managing your digital archiving policy with Keepers Registry” at the Expo Pavilion on August 22^nd, 2023 (12:00-12:45). The full program is available here: https://iflawlic2023.planner.documedias.systems/api/documents/pdf-program.