News
2010/03/01 – 33rd UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition
The ISSN International Centre will be present to the 33rd UKSG Annual Conference and Exhibition (Edinburgh) from 12 April-14 April 2010.2009/12/22 – 20,000 new ISSN for the French local press
Acting both as a national bibliography and as national union catalog, the "Bibliography of political and general information French press" (called "BIPFPIG" under its French acronym) lists, department by department, all the general interest newspapers, which started their publication before the press decrees adopted just after the "liberation" at the end of the Second World War (August 26 and September 30, 1944); it provides an inventory of all collections that are kept in France (BNF, National Archives, local libraries, regional archives, city archives, university libraries, local institutions and all other institutions open to the public).
The BIPFPIG, which began in 1963, is now three-quarters completed or under way (62 departments published +6 being drafted, 20 remain to be processed, as well as Paris, the former Seine-et-Oise and the overseas Departments). 8 regions are already fully covered (Auvergne, Basse-Normandie, Corsica, Franche-Comte Languedoc-Roussillon, Limousin, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Pays de la Loire).
Despite the quality of its contents, and the growing interest for local history and for the history of the press, the paper edition of this bibliography does not yet have under its present guise the reputation which could be expected. For this reason, the BNF has endeavored since September 2005 to create an online version of this bibliography, which would display on the web the BIPFPIG records from the BNF catalogue, together with the BNF holding statements as well as those belonging to other institutions found in the SUDOC catalogue. The ISSN number of the publication concerned are to be used as a matching key between the BNF and SUDOC catalogues.
It is thus necessary that all BIPFPIG records should have an ISSN, which was not the case so far, since ISSN had seldom been assigned to the old local press publications. This was the goal of a project undertaken in several stages.
Step 1: Marking up of records. From April to August 2006, 22,600 records from the BNF catalogue describing the titles listed in the BIPFPIG paper volumes were marked with a project code : the word BIPFPIG followed the two digits identifying the department concerned. It is now possible to look them up through http://catalogue.bnf.fr/.
Step 2: manual and automatic corrections. From June 2007 to July 2008, 1,800 ISSN assigned by the International ISSN Centre through a semi- automated processing of old ISSN assignment requests created by ABES, were added manually in the BNF catalogue. At the same time, some automated processing improved the quality of records created through retro conversion : transferring to the appropriate tags of numbering and frequency data, breaking up into different subfields the sub-titles and imprint entries, improved formatting area of the address.
Step 3: semi-automated assignment of ISSN to BIPFPIG records. This project was designed by the ISSN International Centre and the BnF at a meeting on November 16, 2007. In December 2008 a test batch of 500 records (400 as a representative sample + 100 problematic cases) was sent to the ISSN International Centre, which in turn provided an HTML diagnostic file for the detection of possible duplicates and an Excel spreadsheet listing the title proper (or reference titles from the BNF catalogue). The BNF had to confirm for each title that it should actually be numbered, and, if the title already existed as a key title in the ISSN Register, enter the most appropriate additional element so as to make up a unique key title . In March 2009, this batch test was validated and 20,543 records to be numbered were delivered to the International ISSN Centre. In April, the Centre detected a few titles published outside France by providing a index of places of publication; the BNF produced scans of title pages for these ISSN assignment requests which were to be processed by the respective ISSN National Centre concerned.
The records provided by the BNF included some tags which had been converted incorrectly into variant titles, which made necessary to re-extract the records : on May 18th 20,715 corrected records were delivered again to the International ISSN Centre. The Centre sorted them alphabetically by titles and divided the file into 21 batches of 1 000 records each. These batches were sent to the BNF one after the other, as from June 2, 2009. On a more or less weekly basis, the ISSN International Centre sent to the BNF the diagnostic files and the corresponding spreadsheets for each batch of 1,000 records, which the BNF in turn validated or processed for key title assignment (about 1 title out of 3 required such an operation); the BNF then sent back the completed spreadsheet to the ISSN International Centre, which used it to massage the records and make a preliminary test load so as to provide the BNF with the few error cases (key title duplicates) as yet undetected; after final corrections, the updated file was then finally loaded into the ISSN register.
The operation ended on November 30, 2009: in 6 months (excluding preparatory works), 20, 431 new ISSN have been assigned (ISSN 2120-0009 to 2140-4305). The word "BIPFPIG" appears in tag 541 of the ISSN Register records resulting from this process, and it is possible to look them up by searching for the word "BIPFPIG" anywhere in the record on http://portal.issn.org/.
These new ISSN and key titles were automatically injected into the BNF catalogue records, batch after batch. Finally, in the ISSN Register, the corresponding ISSN have been introduced wherever possible in the appropriate fields linking bibliographic records so as to allow for a seamless navigation in the "family tree" of the different related publications.
Thanks to these ISSN, all SUDOC libraries and SUDOC-PS regional centres can now add their own holding statements to the BIPFPIG records. The old local press is thus better represented in the national networks (SUDOC, CCFr) as well as in Worldcat where the BNF records are being copied (which will allow SUDOC records to link up appropriately). Other developments are envisaged to as to make these collections even more visible and accessible to the public in the years to come.
The International Center would like to thank all the persons who participated in the success of this identification process. It is indeed a real success to have achieved such cooperative work for such a large number of publications in so little time: this operation should become a reference and an example for the ISSN network.
2009/09/03 – Attention: change of address from September, 28th, 2009!
The ISSN International Centre will move on September, 28th, 2009! PLEASE NOTE: The ISSN International Centre has moved to new premises. Please note our new address: 45, rue de Turbigo 75003 PARIS (France). The phone and fax numbers, the email addresses will remain unchanged.2009/06/10 – New ISSN Centre
The ISSN International Centre is pleased to announce the creation of the Namibia ISSN Centre. The National Library of Namibia will host the ISSN National Centre.