ISSN United Kingdom

ISSN UK Centre, Based within the British Library, Boston Spa.

History
1974 – UK National Serials Data Centre (UKNSDC) is created
1976 – 2^nd ISSN Directors’ Meeting held in London
1992 – UKNSDC relocates from London to Boston Spa
1993 – UKNSDC renamed ISSN UK Centre
2010 – ISSN UK hosts the 35^th ISSN Directors’ Meeting at the British Library, Boston Spa

Directors
1974 - 1981 Ross Bourne
1981 - 1985 Albert Mullis
1985 - 1992 John Byford
1992 - 1999   Sally Strutt
1999 - 2006 David Baron
2006 - 2024 Louise Howlett
2024 - ....... Richard Brown

Participation in the ISSN Network
The UK Centre actively participates in the Network through representation at the ISSN Governing Board, participation in the ISSN Review Group, and the provision of a Rapporteur at the ISSN Directors’ Meetings between 2002 and 2015.

We have good working relationships with many centres across the Network and are keen to develop further strong working practices with other centres to maintain the accuracy and currency of ISSN records.

Local situation
The UK Centre plays an integral role in the serials processing operations at the British Library. We work very closely with the Serials Cataloguing Team, who also assign ISSN in the course of their work.

Although not part of the Legal Deposit process, our work plays an important role in this workflow by alerting colleagues to new titles and providing publisher information for order maintenance.

The last 30 years has seen a large increase in the number of ISSN requests generated by the commercial requirement for publishers to barcode their magazines.

In addition to the day-to-day work, we also undertake ongoing project work such as ABES assignments and ROAD reassessment.

In May 2024 we implemented the use of ISSN+ to create ISSN records.

Statistics
2024.....1,007 ISSN requests received; 1,179 ISSN assigned (715 titles).
Total number of ISSN records under UK responsibility – 122,252 (Jan 2023)

ISSN UK Team (January 2025)