Jun 20 2006
Is Your Blog A Periodical?
ISSN stands for International Standard Serial Number, used to uniquely identify magazines and periodicals, similar to a book’s ISBN.
Are they really compatible? And what’s the point? Compatibility of Weblogs and ISSN points out that:
Well, that depends on the weblogs, of course; and I’d guess that most are NOT of that type. If every blogger discovers this method to make their blog “official”, the ISSN will be inundated with applications, possibly discrediting the use of an ISSN altogether.
The ISSN registrars didn’t have blogs in mind, but they will soon.
I applied for an ISSN today. I’ll post updates as I receive them.
Update (90 minutes after I submitted the application): I received the following email from Canada’s ISSN folks:
I added the emphasize. I wonder what weblogs received an ISSN.
What this also means is that your blog can be added to a library catalogue: “Your Weblog will be indexed in the international database of publications. It will then be possible for a would-be reader to ask a librarian to locate your Weblog via the ISSN database.” Once they locate it, they can download the record and add it to the collection. Just think, SWT will be coming to a library near you someday!
And this is funny (to me) because it’s true: “Remember, as far as librarians are concerned, if it doesn’t have some kind of number, it doesn’t exist.” Heh.