ISSN German centre is working on an integrated workflow in cooperation with ZDB

ISSN integration is a project led by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek (DNB) to bring together the ISSN assignment and cataloguing, as well as the acquisition and descriptive cataloguing of e-legal deposit of serials into one workflow. Then, in the course of 2016, the German ISSN Centre will assign and catalog ISSNs directly in ZDB aka Zeitschriftendatenbank, after mapping the existing metadata format to an interoperable one (MARC21). ZDB, the German union catalog for serials, is one of the world’s biggest databases for serials (journals, annuals, newspapers etc., incl. e-journals).

The ZDB actually contains more than 1.7 million bibliographic records of serials from the 16th century onwards, from all countries, in all languages, held in 4.400 German and Austrian libraries, with 13.6 million holdings information. It is maintained by the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and technically hosted by the German National Library.

As one of the results, metadata exchanges with publishers will be facilitated, noticeably with Springer, who represents 40% of ISSN assignments for pre-publications in Germany.