International Standard Music Number (ISMN).

Unger, Carolin

20 years ago, the Prussian Cultural Foundation in Berlin signed a contract with the International Standards Organization to establish the International ISMN Agency at the State Library in Berlin. The founding ISMN director was Hartmut Walravens.

In 2006 the ISMN turned into a membership organization with most members being national libraries. The board is elected every three years and last year--at our annual meeting in Moldova--Hartmut Walravens was again reelected as Chairman, Joachim Jaenecke as Vice-Chairman and Bettina von Seyfried as Treasurer.

From the beginning the ISMN system was closely connected to IAML which played a prominent role in its development and we are very grateful for the longstanding help and support.

The ISMN system was first applied mainly in European countries. Meanwhile the system has spread quite well around the world: there are now 57 ISMN agencies. Nevertheless, our latest member, Iceland, had been one of the very few remaining European countries without an ISMN agency. The ones we are still hoping to join are Albania, Belarus, Malta and Montenegro. Of these the National Library in Montenegro already expressed an interest to become a member.

Since this year's IAML conference took place in Austria I would like to mention that Austria and also Switzerland do not have ISMN agencies of their own. But music publishers there can get ISMN numbers from the German ISMN agency which covers all three countries.

Recently and also to a great extent due to the support of US IAML members one of the world's biggest music publishing countries started its agency work: the Library of Congress administers the ISMN system for the United States and we are very glad to have them as a partner. They will host this year's ISMN annual general meeting.

But the ISMN is not only an important tool for big countries like the USA. It is of equal importance for small countries like our new member Iceland, a country with about 320,000 inhabitants. They do not have many music publishers and not too many publications of notated music there. But it is the quality that counts. To pave the way for these music publications on the world market, the ISMN offers good options.

ISMN allows all music publications of a country to be integrated into a standardized international system and to be easily registered in national bibliographies and trade directories.

In addition to other helpful applications such as the Australian TROVE and Music Australia project, ISMN is a basic feature of the IDNV, the International Database for Printed Music and Musical Products, a joint project of the German and British ISMN agencies. It is a large music-in-print database containing complete and up-to-date catalogues of publishers from different countries and comprising currently nearly 600,000 music publications.

Also the Dutch ISMN agency developed an interesting application: it is a combination of ISMN allocation for publishers and musicin-print database which is especially helpful for countries without a national music bibliography or music-in-print.

Libraries are important customers of music publishers and of the music trade. For an even more wide-spread application of the ISMN I would like to encourage all librarians to make clear to all their stakeholders, especially of course the music publishers, that the ISMN is a tool to facilitate your work and their work. But this tool will function much better if the ISMN is given not only on the sheet music publication itself but also in catalogs, regardless whether printed or on the Internet.

Some facts in short:

Membership

There are now 57 ISMN agencies, the latest members being Argentina and Iceland.

Interest was recently shown from Benin, Bolivia, Chile, and Ethiopia. There was progress in the preparations for a Chinese agency. The ISMN standard was translated into the Chinese language. The United States agency at the Library of Congress is making good progress in implementing all necessary components for successful operations. The Music Center of The Netherlands with the only recently established ISMN agency was unfortunately no longer funded by the government and had to close down by December 2012. We are very glad that Donemus Publishing took over the agency responsibility.

AGM

The latest Annual General Assembly of the ISMN community took place in Chisinau, Moldova, on September 12, 2012, hosted by the Book Chamber of Moldova. We were especially grateful for the invitation since the Book Chamber only stepped in at short notice after Malta had failed to organize the meeting. For the third time we aligned our meeting with that of the International ISBN Agency. Since this brought synergies on both sides we intend to continue with this arrangement whenever possible.

As guest speaker Stella Griffiths from the International ISBN Agency gave an update on recent developments of the ISBN. Davo van Peursen from the Dutch ISMN agency presented an Internet portal for a title database connected to ISMN administration.

The next ISMN meeting will take place on 13 September 2013 in Washington DC by invitation of the Library of Congress, the US ISMN agency.

Publications

The latest ISMN Newsletter (no. 22)--also available on the ISMN Website--provides information on the 2012 AGM.

As was reported last year, we also published a new ISMN brochure. It informs about the ISMN, its benefits and application. It is more general than the ISMN Users' Manual and targeted at a wider audience within the music and trade sectors.

Conferences

Since July 2012 the International ISMN Agency was represented at the IAML Conference in Montreal, the ISMN and ISBN Panel meetings in Chisinau, Moldova, the Frankfurt Book Fair, the Frankfurt Music Fair, the annual meeting of ISBN and ISMN agencies from the Balkan region in Belgrade and the annual ISO TC46 meeting in Paris.

Board

Dr. Hartmut Walravens (Chairman), Dr. Joachim Jaenecke (Vice Chairman), Dr. Bettina von Seyfried (Treasuerer) were re-elected at the Board elections at the AGM in Chisinau. The next board elections are scheduled for 2015.

Carolin Unger

ISMN Coordinator