The place of publication determines the ISSN Centre responsible for identification. However, when a publisher operates in several countries, an agreement may be reached between this multinational publisher and the involved ISSN Centres so that all requests for identification are handled by one centre. The ISSN Network has created a public list identifying more than 300 multinational publishers. These publishers have been spotted through the ISSN Portal (https://portal.issn.org) data. The ISSN International Centre works with the National Centres on this list of publishers to determine their responsibility for identifying the publications of these publishers. The list also contains information on the names by which these publishers are known and a mapping of relationships between publishers. It also contains a link to the ISNI and VIAF databases. This data is managed by the ISSN Network in an internal wiki that will be updated regularly. Projects to disseminate the list more widely will be launched shortly.

A project to verify and assign electronic ISSNs for journals published on Persee has improved their reporting in Mir@bel. Since March 2022, about a hundred title families have been added to Mir@bel, in addition to about 40 eISSNs that have been assigned. All of Persee’ title families are now visible in Mir@bel (517 titles for 400 journals in January).

The National Diet Library in Japan hosts the Japanese National Centre for ISSN. The National Centre has recently updated its webpage in English supplying information on the requirements and procedures for ISSN registration.

Koffi Attede, Director of the National Library of Benin, and his team organized a meeting with Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, in Porto Novo on 1 March 2023. The National Library of Benin, which has hosted the ISSN National Centre of Benin since 2000, is undergoing a major renovation as part of an ambitious program to offer better services to publishers and patrons both onsite and online. ISSN and ISBN requests can now be submitted online.

The 2023 NISO+ Conference focused on persistent identifiers (PIDs)! Gaelle Bequet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, moderated one session about the fragmentation of the PID landscape and the recommendations made by Knowledge Exchange in their latest report to implement PIDs. She spoke at the session dealing with the interoperability and the diversity of PIDs . Last but not least, she moderated the session about PIDs for humanities researchers.

The international cooperation between ISSN International Centre and ZBW is expanding in the context of digital preservation. The ZBW is the first German academic library to become a “Keeper” for the ISSN International Centre. The ZBW is responsible for the digital preservation of nearly 2,000 journals and other serial resources in economics and will list them in the ISSN Portal. Digital preservation at the ZBW has been awarded the international Core Trust Seal in 2020 and is the first institution in Germany to have achieved three certifications: the Data Seal of Approval, the nestor-Seal and also the CoreTrustSeal.

Mikael Wetterström, Specialist in Automated Processing of Bibliographic Data at ISSN International Centre, will participate in the ISBD webinar to be held on 26 January 2023.

A major revision of the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD) was decided in 2018 by the IFLA Committee on Standards and the IFLA ISBD Review Group, aiming at aligning the ISBD to the overarching conceptual model provided by IFLA, the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM). The ISBD for Manifestation Task Force is working out an alignment of the ISBD with LRM at the Manifestation level (ISBDM).

Join this webinar on 26 January 2023, from 3 to 6 pm CET (GMT/UTC+1)!

Attendance is free, but registration is required. The full programme is announced on IFLA website.

MARC21 Update No. 35 released 21 December 2022 is now available on the MARC website. The documentation includes changes made to the MARC 21 formats resulting from proposals which were considered by the MARC 21 community since the publication of Update No. 34 (July 2022), including the joint proposal from the ISSN International Centre and the National Finnish Library about the Field 856. There is now a subfield to track persistant identifiers ($g) as well as a subfield for non-functioning URIs ($h). Changes and new text appear in red on this page.

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The National Library of Nigeria (NLN) is responsible for the issuance of all International Standard Numbers. It  has the responsibility of sensitising and advising authors, printers and publishers on the importance and the professional use of these numbers. The Nigerian National Serial Data Centre (NNCDC) was set up at the National Library of Nigeria in 1976, and became the Nigerian ISSN Centre. It is responsible for the registration of all serial titles published in Nigeria and for assigning them with ISSN. The National Library of Nigeria is the only agency mandated to issue ISBN and ISSN. Therefore, authors and publishers are advised to avoid the use of fake of ISBN/ISSN visiting any branch of the National Library of Nigeria or its website.

The National Librarian/CEO, Prof. Chinwe Anunobi and Ms. Amaka Ojielo (Director, International Standards and Programmes Department, NLN) at the 47th ISSN Directors’ meeting in Cairo, Egypt.