Annual general meeting.

Walravens, Hartmut

The latest Annual General Assembly of the ISMN community took place in Lisbon, Portugal, on September 14-15, on invitation of the Biblioteca Nacional. It was an excellent meeting, for two reasons: It followed immediately the AGM of the International ISBN Agency, which took place at Estoril, on the outskirts of Lisbon. This allowed for a closer contact of representatives of both communities and cut costs as in not a small number of cases the same persons / departments are responsible for ISBN and ISMN. Thus the attendance of the ISMN AGM was larger than usually. The other reason, of course, was the wonderful hospitality of colleagues at the National Library: Ms. Ines Cordeiro and her staff did their best to make colleagues feel welcome; it also turned out that there was actually more music publishing in Portugal than previously assumed.

The next AGM will again be aligned with the ISBN AGM: It is planned for September 13 in Pretoria, by invitation of the National Library of South Africa. In this case the ISMN AGM will be followed by a training course for ISBN and ISMN (Sept. 14), and then the ISBN AGM is to follow. Again, it is an opportunity for colleagues to take part in several meetings--and kill several birds with one stone. There has been some discussion whether it makes sense to travel all the way to South Africa for such a meeting, to a country which cannot compare in music production with Europe and North America. On the other hand, as the standard claims to be international, the impression should be avoided that it was just something for Europeans ... Actually, South Africa is not yet an ISMN member; but the meeting will offer opportunities for African colleagues to familiarize themselves with the standard and perhaps join the community.

Standard

This year's ISO TC46 meeting took place in Sydney, Australia, at the beginning of May. Major subjects were progress on new ISO standards (like Name Identifier, Collection Identifier), misuse (or undesirable use) of identifiers, ISO contract issues, and enhanced interoperability between existing identifiers.

The International ISMN Agency has an A Liaison with TC46.

Publications

The latest ISMN Newsletter--also available on the Website--provides information on the 2010 AGM.

Membership

There are now 52 ISMN agencies, the latest member is The Netherlands (Muziek Centrum Nederland) which makes Europe completely represented by ISMN, except for Albania, Belarus, and a few other small countries without any remarkable music production.

There is progress in the negotiations with further interested countries: China is preparing the introduction of ISMN. A delegation of the Chinese Institute of Publishing Science (CIPS) in Beijing visited Berlin and had promising talks with the IA. In the US, Library of Congress assigned staff to prepare the implementation of the ISMN. While the Library, music libraries in the US, and the US IAML branch are in favour of ISMN, the publishers associations show little interest; on the other hand, it is difficult to blame them because so far they are not familiar with the standard. The LC ISMN Agency is intended to be operational as of Oct. 1, 2011. The service will be free of charge.

It should be emphasized that according to the ISO standards, ISBN must not be used for notated music.

Publishers' database

A directory of music publishers with their ISMN prefixes was installed on the International Agency's website. It succeeds to the former printed directory which is not continued by the publisher. It will be no longer possible to offer worldwide music publisher information--it would be too much of an effort. Therefore only ISMN members will be listed, in agreement with the stipulations of the standard.

Applications

ISMN has not yet reached the stage where the whole sheet music sector is geared to the ISMN--as the book sector to ISBN. The German/British Music in Print catalogue (IDNV), however, is growing.

In Australia, Music Australia; the music information system of the National Library, now integrated in TROVE, has made much use of the ISMN, and it has been suggested to apply it retrospectively in order to have the country's whole music production in one homogenous system.

The National Library of Norway entertains similar ideas.

Meetings

In 2011 the International ISMN Agency was represented at the Frankfurt Music Fair, the annual ISO TC46 meeting, a Turkish standards conference in Istanbul (by kind invitation of the Turkish Ministry of Culture) and the IAML conference in Dublin.

Agency Projects

An intern has been working for six months at the International Agency to design improvements for the ISMN website and devise an action plan. The News section now covers a wider range of issues relevant to the music industry in general. It is updated regularly. The FAQ and the Link section have been improved, as well.

The publication of an informative brochure about ISMN and its application is under way. This will be more general than the ISMN Manual and targeted at a wider audience within the music and trade sectors.

Board

The board consists of: Dr. Hartmut Walravens, chair; Dr. Joachim Jaenecke, vice chair; Dr. Bettina von Seyfried, treasurer.

Hartmut Walravens

Chair, International ISMN Agency