NSK hosts 2025 ISBN and ISMN Regional Meeting
On 10 and 11 June 2025, the National and University Library in Zagreb (NSK) hosted the 11th ISBN Regional Meeting, which it organised in cooperation with the International ISBN Agency.
After a welcome address by the NSK Director General Professor Ivanka Stričević, in which she referred to the long and successful cooperation between NSK and the international agencies managing the ISBN and ISMN systems, the Head of the NSK Identifiers Division Danijela Getliher also welcomed to the meeting the representatives of the ISBN national agencies in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Hungary, Kosovo, Montenegro, Republic of Srpska, Slovenia and Serbia along with the other meeting participants.
Apart from the International ISBN Agency Executive Director Stella Griffiths and the Agency’s Operations Manager Nick Woods, also attending the meeting was the Executive Director of the International ISMN Agency Sylvia Schmidt, who joined the meeting in connection with the 30th anniversary of the founding of the Croatian ISMN Agency.
Reports, analyses and discussions of current identifiers-related issues
After the Head of the NSK Croatian Digital Library Development Centre Karolina Holub presented Croatia’s new e-legal deposit system, the meeting’s programme proceeded with Ms Griffiths’s standard report on the activities of the world’s central ISBN office, the latest developments in the ISBN system and its new services.
The reports of the meeting participants on the activities of the represented regional agencies provided an overview of the areas in which more coordination is required and where additional support is needed in the implementation of the latest decisions and guidelines as well as in responding to identifier assignment-related challenges.
Also, the meeting participants discussed identifiers-related procedures with regard to the related practices in the publishing sector as well as issues associated with GDPR-focused data management, ISBN and ISMN allocation to digital publications, the impact of AI on the publishing industry and identifiers assignment, legal deposit procedures, etc.
