Using a dumb number to do smart things: Learning to dance with ISSN

Abstract

This written celebration of 40 years of the ISSN Network is written in two parts. The first takes its starting point in about 1995, about halfway in the life of the ISSN Network, when the Internet was well established and the Web was beginning to have significance for scholarly communication. As this was also when contact was made with the ISSN International Centre and EDINA was being established, this chronicles some of their joint activity over the past twenty years. This makes reference to the role the ISSN has had in identifying serial content during the shift from the print to the digital. The second part reflects upon the relationship between the Web, the Scholarly Record and the ISSN as part of a forward look to the next twenty to forty years. An underlying theme is focus on how to ensure continuity of access to the digital back copy of issued content from old and new forms of seriality.