International Standard Music Number (ISMN).

Unger, Carolin

ISMN, the International Standard Music Number, is the international standard number for editions of music scores. It identifies and accompanies a sheet music product uniquely, from the first phase of planning it at a publishing house over its manufacturing and - in most cases--printing and through all points of the supply chain.

ISMN was often described as the little baby of IAML, since the development of the ISMN standard was to a great deal made possible thanks to the initiative and commitment of IAML. Meanwhile the little baby has rather grown up: It is 18 years old and making its way around the world.

Membership and Annual General Meetings

Currently we have 56 member agencies, most of them are national libraries.

One of the newest members is the United States and we are glad to have the Library of Congress on board as the official US ISMN center who will issue numbers free of charge to U.S. music publishers. As we learned they are currently in the process of building up their operation: Website functionality is being tested and authentication security issues resolved. First use will be by designated Beta testers new to ISMN and a small number of publishers already using ISMN, issued to them in the past. We trust that the Library of Congress's expertise will create a solid foundation for the development of ISMN in the US. And we are happy that they will organize our Annual General Meeting 2013 in Washington, a great opportunity to share new ideas among the ISMN community.

Other countries recently joined the system thanks to last year's AGM in Pretoria which was organized by the National Library of South Africa. Besides South Africa, now Kenya is a member and other African countries are likely to follow. The AGM was aligned with that of the International ISBN Agency and there were good synergetic effects since we could meet representatives of several African institutions and also could give a presentation on the ISMN at a seminar for African ISBN agencies. Furthermore, the National Library in Pretoria had organized a splendid event with the possibility to meet with people from the publishing and music scene of the country.

This year's Annual General Meeting will take place in Chi in u in Moldova on kind invitation of the National Book Chamber and we hope to build up good contacts to more countries in the region.

Regardless of the nearly 60 countries that already make use of the ISMN, there are still many blank spots on the ISMN world map, namely in Africa, Asia and South America.

What we aim at is that the ISMN becomes as widespread and indispensable for sheet music as the ISBN is for books. Therefore we would like to encourage all IAML delegates whose country is not a member yet to explore if their national library might consider to establish an ISMN agency. At the IAML conference in Dublin we were pleased to see the delegate from the National Library of Argentina approaching us right after the Council meeting to announce that the library wanted to become an ISMN member. The agency is currently being established.

Support for agencies

To facilitate the work of our ISMN agencies, we are happy that we soon can offer them an administration program. It makes the allocation of numbers, the address administration as well as the production of number lists and of barcodes for the publishers very easy. The program was developed by the German ISMN agency and we are very grateful for their cooperation.

Publications

The latest ISMN Newsletter--also available on the Website--provides information on the 2011 AGM.

A few months ago we published a new brochure. Other than our ISMN Users' Manual or the ISMN Newsletter, this brochure aims at the benefits of the ISMN for music publishers, music trade and libraries in general. We will be happy to send you a copy if you are interested.

Applications

A number comes to life only by its applications and besides the benefits for the publisher and the supply chain there are promising examples already.

The Australian National Library uses the ISMN for their TROVE respectively Music

Australia project where it combines catalogue entries with information on related subjects, such as an exhibition about a certain composer or a performance of a work.

Another important application with an international focus is the German IDNV (Internationale Datenbank fur Noten und Verlagsartikel--International Database for Printed Music and Musical Products). The IDNV is a large music-in-print database containing complete and up-to-date catalogues of publishers from different countries. It currently comprises 580,000 titles from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, United Kingdom, France and other countries. Users get all the metadata including the ISMN and can order directly.

The National Library of Norway prepares retrospective numbering of sheet music in order to have the country's whole music production in one homogeneous system.

We hope that examples like these will make the ISMN even more widely used.

Meetings

During the last 12 months the International ISMN Agency was represented at the Frankfurt Music Fair, the ISO TC46 meeting in Berlin and the IAML conference in Montreal.

Board

The Board of the International ISMN Agency still consists of Dr. Hartmut Walravens, chair; Dr. Joachim Jaenecke, vice chair; Dr. Bettina von Seyfried, treasurer. You can contact us on ismn@ismn-international.org; our website is http://ismn-international.org.

Carolin Unger

Executive Director

International ISMN Agency