ISSN International Centre @ IFLA WLIC 2021: ISBD in Transition

Ten years after the publication of its Consolidated Edition, ISBD is at a crossroad. The Revision of the ISBD is taking place in a complex environment driven by diverse bibliographic and technological developments and pressing users’ needs.

There is on one hand the urgent need to extend its coverage horizontally (to a larger array of resources) and vertically (to more granular descriptions). There is on the other hand the strategic mandate to align the ISBD with the IFLA Library Reference Model (LRM), to keep up with the developments in the bibliographic universe and achieve complementarity between IFLA standards. In addition there is the necessity to engage – with other cultural institutions – in the web of data and linked data and semantic web technologies.
In this session, experts of ISBD and bibliographic standards are presenting their views that are driving the transition of the ISBD. Elena Escolano Rodríguez, Head of the Central Library at the Spanish Ministry of Economic Affairs and Digital Transformation, presented an update of ISBD as the response to the communities of users to solve their needs of information; Mikael Wetterström, Specialist in Automated Processing of Bibliographic Data at ISSN International Centre, presented the ISBD revision work done so far by the ISBD for Manifestation Task Force. Gordon Dunsire, RDA Technical Team Liaison Officer, presented the position and role of ISBD in the current bibliographic universe, including its relationship to other IFLA bibliographic standards, RDA (Resource Eescription and Access), BIBFRAME, and linked open data.