As part of the partnership between the ISSN International Centre and Mir@bel, new information has been added to Mir@bel. The open data on the country of publication of journals is now automatically retrieved from the ISSN portal to enrich journal records in Mir@bel.

Take a look at the Mir@bel data production diagram to see all the enrichments made automatically. From now on, the data retrieved from the ISSN portal will be the ISSN-L and the journal’s country of publication.

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, takes stock of the organisation’s development since 2014. In particular, she mentions the creation of the ISSN portal and the opening up of data, the expansion of the network notably with the accession of Austria, the United Arab Emirates, the Russian Federation, Peru and Ukraine, the implementation of a new data production tool accessible to all national centres and the collaboration with a wide range of partners such as DOAJ, Latindex, CLOCKSS, Portico, Rede Cariniana and Springer Nature, to name but a few. Read the full  article:

https://www.researchinformation.info/analysis-opinion/expanding-horizons

Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the International Centre, presented the Centre’s strategy at the General Assembly of the ISBN International Agency on 25 September. This was an opportunity to meet representatives of national ISBN centres from various countries, some of which are also national centres of the ISSN network.

PhDr. Beáta Katrincová was born on July 16, 1963 in Bratislava. She graduated at the Faculty of Philosophy of the Comenius University in Bratislava in the field of librarianship and scientific information and started working at the Department of State Law as a documentarian. Since 1998, she worked in the University Library in Bratislava as the head of the ISSN National Agency. She worked in this position until retiring on disability in 2022. On October 6 2024, she died at the age of 61.

She built the ISSN National Agency in Slovakia from the very beginning and prepared a manual for Slovak periodical publishers. She spoke at various conferences and is the author of several articles. She translated the international standard STN ISO 3297 (International Standard Serial publications) into Slovak. For many years, she regularly participated at the Meeting of the Directors of the ISSN National Centres. She was also active in IFLA and worked as member of the Standing Committee of the IFLA SOCR (Serials and other continuing resources) section.

The worldwide expert community of ISSN Agencies appreciates the work of Mrs. Katrincová. She was respected positively and perceived not only in the environment of Slovak but also foreign librarianship very much, even after her retirement.

Her passing is not only a loss for the staff of the University Library in Bratislava, but also for the international community of ISSN agencies.

We will remember Beata for a long time and always with love.

The 49th ISSN Centre Directors’ Meeting is being held from October 21-24, 2024 in Tunis, Tunisia, at the kind invitation of the National Library of Tunisia.

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 !

The full ISSN International Centre 2023 Activity Report is now available in English and French. The summarized report is available in 6 languages.

You can download the last activity reports here: https://www.issn.org/the-centre-and-the-network/our-mission/our-strategy/.

The Brazilian Institute of Information in Science and Technology (IBICT) is organizing two events related to scientific publications. Gaëlle Béquet, Director of the ISSN International Centre, has been invited by the Director of IBICT to present a paper on persistent identifiers and on the article she published in the International Journal of Knowledge Engineering and Management.

The program for these conferences is available.

Prof. Ana María Cetto, President of Latindex, has invited Gaëlle Béquet to participate in the session on persistent identifiers and digital archiving during the annual meeting of Latindex members, which will be held in Madrid this year. The other speakers in this session will be John Kunze from the California Digital Library and Silvia Pérez from the Argentine Centre for Scientific and Technical Information.

Gaëlle Béquet will give a presentation on the future development of the Keepers Registry service on Wednesday, September 18, during the IPres conference. This event provides a unique opportunity to meet with representatives of archiving agencies that may participate in this service, especially in priority areas such as Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The conference program is available.

The Society of Librarians of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina fully supports the National and University Library of Bosnia and Herzegovina (NUB BiH). This library is crucial for preserving and archiving the country’s cultural and scientific heritage. It also produces the national bibliography and manages national agencies for ISSN, ISBN (International Standard Book Number), ISMN (International Standard Music Number).

Closing the National Library would disrupt publishing and academic progress, and hamper library cataloging. The Society urges leaders to prevent the library’s demise, which would fulfill the destructive goals of the 1992 war and devastate the nation’s cultural foundation.