issn’t (sorry, I couldn’t resist)
Written on 13 November 2003 | Posted in site stuff | 0 Comments
I applied for an ISSN for this blog because I was sort of curious about how the National Library of Canada was handling requests for ISSNs for blogs. And also because the application process is easy and online and being in the ISSN Register, the worldwide directory of serial publications, would have been neat.
I received the following boilerplate response:
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:30 AM
Subject: Re: ISSN Application
Thank you for your application. At the moment, we are no longer assigning ISSN to weblogs, but the situation is under review. The question of whether weblogs will be able to be assigned ISSN is under discussion in the international ISSN Network. The question hinges on the scope of the ISSN but also on the very real consideration of the limited staff resources of ISSN centres worldwide.
This got me curious so I did some digging. It appears that some of the early bloggers received ISSNs, probably before the national centres started receiving bucketloads of requests from bloggers, making them rethink their policies. Since ISSNs are intended to be identifiers, and since blogs meet the definition of a “serial”, I hope the National Centres will be able to come up with a way to handle the volume of requests (it seems to me that that is their only legitimate concern regarding ISSNs for blogs) and stop their equivocal footwork around the issue. I sent the NLC (Canada’s ISSN issuing body) this response:
Date: Thursday, November 13, 2003 11:30 AM
Subject: ISSN Application – Your Response
Thanks for your response. I would like to direct your attention to a document called “Compatibility of Weblogs and ISSN” (available online at http://fawny.org/issn/compatibility/). I encourage you to read this document and would hope that you take some of its arguments into consideration before you finalise your policy on assigning ISSN to weblogs.
Regards,
Amanda Etches-Johnson
Librarian
http://www.etches-johnson.com
For more on this, Joe Clark (who is responsible for the document I referred to in email message) has some very intelligible arguments that are worth dipping into. And, as with anything else, the idea has its opponents as well.