International Standard Music Number (ISMN).

Walravens, Hartmut

The Annual General Assembly of the ISMN community took place in Bonn, Germany, on June 29-30. Thus ISMN returned to a German venue after quite some years; in the meantime, the German ISMN administration, formerly with the Buchhandler-Vereinigung in Frankfurt, now with the German Music Publishers Association in Bonn, had been restructured and consolidated. The Rhenish State Museum offered modern facilities for the meeting, including a restaurant, and the traditional ISMN dinner was offered outside under clear skies.

Standard revision

The main issue was still the revision of the ISMN standard (ISO 10957), which is completed but the standard is not yet published. This gave rise to some doubts in the community whether the new standard was really in force. To make double sure ISO was asked for information:

The standard has become publicly available as a DIS which achieved 100% approval. This means that all of the technical aspects have been agreed. There are only editorial aspects that might be changed from the DIS to the published docuement. If they quote the standard without mentioning the date, this means that they are using the most recent edition, i.e. the publicly available DIS that revises the precedent edition. If you look at the normative references introductory paragraph (ISO Directives Pt 2, 6.2.2), it states:

"The following referenced documents are indispensable for the application of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies."

As a rule, we (ISO/CS editors in accordance with the Dir. Pt 2) consider that any undated reference is most recent one which is publicly available. The most recent edition, in this case, can be considered to be the DIS. Note that we (ISO/CS editors) always cite the title of the DIS in this clause if it is the most recent edition.

Consequently, I don't see any reason why the registration agencies would not be able to apply the DIS, because it is the most recent edition and it is publicly available. The only changes that will be made will be with regards to the aspects of the Registration Authority and the registration agencies (administrative and editorial aspects vis a vis ISO) but will not affect the technical content of how the standard is to be applied. (Information from Dr. M.-L. Pelaprat, Geneva, Dec. 21, 2008).

This underlines that the new standard has been in force since Jan. 1, 2008.

Part of the delay in publishing the standard is due to new ISO procedures regarding the contract with the Registration authority. Also a number of editorial changes have been made to the text of the standard; they do not touch the substance but bring the wording in line with other ISO standards.

Publications

The revised ISMN User's Manual was printed in a small edition and distributed to the members. The updated version is available on the Website of the International Agency. A new publicity flyer and a newsletter featuring the last AGM were also published. An ISMN report informed the German music sector: Neues von der ISMN (Internationale Standard Musik aliennummer). Forum Musikbibliotheken 2008, 231-238.

AGM 2008

Last year's ISMN meeting took place in Yogyakarta, Indonesia, by kind invitation of the Indonesian ISMN Agency (National Library of Indonesia). It was splendidly organized and offered an opportunity for outreach in the region. An international ISMN seminar which was part of the programme was attended by more than 100 participants, some from the neighbouring countries.

Membership

In 2008 there were three new members--Kyrgyzstan, Luxembourg and Bulgaria. In Europe there are only the Netherlands missing. As the Royal Library in The Hague does not have a legal deposit for sheetmusic, they are not an ovious candidate for an ISMN Agency. In the context of the 2009 IAML Conference which took place in Amsterdam, discussions were renewed with the Dutch Music Centre in Amsterdam, and hopefully there will be a solution to the issue. Romania is a member but the national library needs some funding from the government to prepare the ground; so it may take a while until the ISMN system becomes operational there.

Publishers' database

A directory of music publishers with their ISMN prefixes has been prepared and will soon be installed on the International Agency's website. It succeeds to the former printed directory which is not continued by the publisher. Also, 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.

Interoperability

Close cooperation with the other ISO standards of the SC9 family (ISSN, ISBN, ISRC, ISWC) is very important, and this is fostered by the annual ISO TC46 meetings where reports are offered, current standards issues discussed and, lately, interoperability has been on the agenda. A small step forward may be the intention of having the next AGMs of ISBN and ISMN aligned. So there is a chance of having both meetings in September 2010 in Lisbon. There might be considerable synergy from a joint meeting as travel funding is scarce, and in many cases the same persons are responsible for ISBN and ISMN.

Applications

ISMN has not yet reached the stage where the whole sheetmusic sector is geared to the ISMN as the book sector to ISBN. A promising application is IDNV marketed by the German and the British ISMN agencies who cooperate on this venture. It is a Music in Print catalogue with currently about 400,000 titles, and it is growing. While printed music reaches a much smaller audience than books, an advantage is the worldwide market as there is no language barrier. Thus a truly international Music in Print would make the ISMN indispensable....

Board

At the BONN AGM a new board had to be elected as its three year term was over. The board was re-elected and therefore consists still of

Dr. Hartmut Walravens, chair

Dr. Joachim Jaenecke, vice chair

Dr. Bettina von Seyfried, treasurer.

Contacts and Web Address

http://ismn-international.org

email: ismn@ismn-international.org

Hartmut Walravens

Chair, Inernational ISMN Agency