ISSN USA

The U.S. ISSN Center began with a focus on data but quickly evolved to be one of the most prolific assigners of ISSNs. The Center was conceived in 1967 when the three U.S. national libraries: Library of Congress, National Library of Medicine (NLM), and National Agricultural Library (NAL) started the National Serials Data Project to study the feasibility of creating a national, machine-readable database devoted to serials. Shortly thereafter, work began on ANSI Z39.9, American National Standard Identification Number for Serial Publications (then called SSN) that was approved in 1970 and published in 1971. International work on serials identification and description resulted in the recommendation in1970 to establish an International Serials Data System (ISDS), the original name of the ISSN Network. The International Standards Organization (ISO) adapted the pending U.S. ISSN standard (Z39.9) into the 1972 draft standard, ISO 3297, for the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN) that was published in 1975. These projects all converged in 1972 when the Library agreed that the National Serials Data Program (NSDP) would become the ISDS center for the United States. The earlier name was replaced in October 2008 by “U.S. ISSN Center.”

In NSDP’s early years, ISSNs were assigned primarily to titles cataloged for the Library, and for titles requested by scientific and technical abstracting & indexing services. In 1976 when I first joined NSDP, staff fought to answer the rare publisher request delivered by post. Serial issues displaying an ISSN were so rare that they were placed on a bulletin board. Today, ISSNs are assigned to the entire gamut of continuing resources including even a magazine printed on a t-shirt as well as the developing genre, podcasts. ISSN requests are received from large commercial publishers, private organizations, businesses, scholarly societies, and individual self-publishers.

Past highlights of the U.S. ISSN Center’s over 50-year history include: a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant in the mid-1970’s (under which I was hired) to develop, in collaboration with the newly- formed CONSER Program, a database of scientific and technical serials abstracted by major A&I services; a 1978 interagency agreement with the U.S. Postal Service (still in effect) to provide ISSNs for U.S. serials mailed at what is now “periodicals rate;” the 1983-1986 CONSER A&I project to extend the indexing coverage of the NSF project to include major A&I services in all disciplines; and a cooperative agreement (still in effect) first signed in 2000 with R.R. Bowker and successors for a part-time employee to perform ISSN work for the benefit of both organizations.

In the 1980’s the U.S. ISSN Center pioneered work with digital serials. The first assignments were to tangible serials such as floppy disks or CD-ROMs. In1988 − five years before the World Wide Web − NSDP assigned its first ISSN to a strange new creature, the online serial. When that first ISSN request for a BITNET serial arrived, there were no special cataloging rules and no ISSN or CONSER instructions on how to create the catalog record to support the ISSN assignment. There was no question that the publication was a serial, and thus eligible for an ISSN assignment, so NSDP catalogers determined practices as they needed them. Today, more than half of U.S. ISSN assignments are for online publications. Documentation via the ISSN Manual and the CONSER component of the Program for Cooperative Cataloging is abundant.

Over the decades, the US ISSN Center has had six directors: Paul Vassalo, Mary Saur Price, Linda Bartley, Wendy Reidel, Julia Blixrud, Regina Reynolds. The Center has hosted four ISSN Directors Meetings: the inaugural Directors Meeting in 1974; followed by meetings in 1983, 2000, and 2018. Some recent milestones include the development of ISSN Uplink (an online ISSN application system) in 2020 and a 2022-23 project with the National Newspaper Association that resulted in over 1100 ISSNs assigned to U.S. local newspapers.  U.S. ISSN Center staff have continued their dedication to supporting the scholarly and general serials publishing landscape and expects, like the publications they work with, to continue that support indefinitely.