CiberResearch has been chosen by ISSN International Centre to carry on the consultancy mission on the evolution of ISSN services.

BnF and CIEPS have joined forces in a project based on batch automatic assignments of ISSN numbers to digitized periodicals titles, particularly those available in Gallica, on the basis of the print version of the publications concerned, already identified with an ISSN.

The task of the BnF is to assign numbers progressively to titles without ISSN. The titles concerned are those which have already been digitized (retrospective part) as well as those which were recently added to the digitization process over the last months (current part). It is therefore a long-term project which just started.

This systematic approach to the numbering of digital reproductions is supplemented by an approach by printed corpus. Thus, the BnF has strived to cover the World war I trench newspapers, as well as the underground resistance newspapers, some of which are available in Gallica. ISSN France numbers both digitized reproductions of trench newspapers, and the print originals which do not yet have an ISSN. A dedicated project code stored in the records should also allow to identify within the ISSN Register both digitized and non-digitized titles.

Recently, the ISSN Register has been enhanced with records of digital reproductions corresponding to titles already identified for their original printed version. They will have their own ISSN, and the ISSN-L will ensure that a link is made between the two versions (print and digital).

Data exchange between the German ISSN national centre at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek in Frankfurt and the ISSN International Centre in Paris is now based on the OAI-PMH protocol. In this new framework, ISSN cataloguers in Germany directly produce ISSN records in the cataloguing environment of their institution; these records, as soon as they are validated by the system, are automatically exposed through a dedicated “ISSN set” in MarcXML (Marc 21) through the library OAI-PMH server, thus allowing the staff at the ISSN International Centre to regularly feed (on a weekly basis) the ISSN register with this harvested output through a dedicated script.

For the management of ISSN assignments and the production of ISSN records, the German ISSN National centre was previously using the dedicated Osiris software, based on CDS-ISIS, the well known bibliographic tool supported by Unesco. Osiris had been specifically developed for the ISSN network in 1990 and has been used by a number of ISSN member countries over the years.

This new workflow, which is the result of a carefully planned project, is much more efficient and sets an example for other national ISSN centres which may also contribute data to the ISSN Register with more frequent and streamlined data updates.