And there is yet a new ISMN agency on the African continent: The Botswana National Library Service will be the 60th member. We hope that they will also become operational, soon.

We have a new member country: The National Library of Morocco will establish the fourth agency on the African continent. The International ISMN Agency now has 59 member agencies. We hope that the Bibliothèque Nationale du Royaume du Maroc will become operational, soon.

The Frankfurt Music Fair will take place 11 - 14 April 2018. Find all information here.

ISO TC 46, the standards body to which the International ISMN Agency with its standard ISO 10957 belongs, will have its next meeting in Lisbon, Portugal, 14 - 18 May 2018.

IAML, the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and documentation Centres, will have its 2018 congress in Leipzig, Germany, 22 - 27 July. Please view the congress website here.

The US performing rights societies ASCAP and BMI start cooperation to create a new comprehensive musical works database. It will deliver an authoritative view of ownership shares in the vast majority of music licensed in the United States. It will offer industry-wide data transparency and include song and composition titles, performing artist information, aggregated shares by society for ASCAP and BMI, International Standard Work Codes and other unique identifiers as well as IPI names and numbers. View more information on the ASCAP website https://www.ascap.com/press/2017/07-26-ascap-bmi-database or on the BMI website https://www.bmi.com/news/entry/bmi-ascap-announce-creation-of-new-musical-works-database.

The Frankfurt Book Fair, one of the most important book fairs in the world, will welcome the international publishing world from 11 October till 15 October 2017. This year's Guest of honor will be France. View more information here: https://buchmesse.de/en/fbf/.

The virtual library Europeana Music, supported by Europeana sounds, now brings together more than 371,000 music recordings, pieces of sheet music and other music items from across Europe. Access to these items can be found at http://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/collections/music.

IAML, the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres, held its annual congress in Riga, Latvia, from 18 - 22 June. Reports and papers presented there - including an ISMN update - are continuously put on their website and can be viewed at http://www.iaml.info/congresses/2017-riga.

The U.S. music rights organization SESAC and the Swiss collective management organization SUISA allied in Mint Digital Services to administer licenses to use musical compositions in multi-territorial online music services on behalf of publshers. The company will be responsible for invoicing and administration of these licence agreements with online service providers.
View the press release at https://www.suisa.ch/nc/en/suisa/stay-informed/recent-news/detail/artikel/2017/mar/suisa-und-sesac-starten-mint-und-gewinnen-warnerchappell-music-als-ersten-kunden.html.

"Imagine looking at original handwritten manuscripts of a piece of music while listening to different interpretations of it, and reading a biography of the composer."
Europeana Music is a new websource bringing together music recordings, sheet music and other music related collections of libraries, archives and museums across Europe. So far, more than 320,000 items are to view at http://www.europeana.eu/portal/en/collections/music.

There is sometimes the question whether the ISMN is really useful to countries with a small music production.
There are indeed advantages:

• Complete bibliographical control over published material
  It is necessary to list and preserve the national production of publications - usually the responsibility of national libraries which issue national bibliographies. If notated music is left out a possibly significant part of the publications would be neglected and would not be preserved. Bibliographic resolution is usually managed by international standard numbers, in the case of music by ISMN.
• Making music publications internationally more visible 
  While music publications of large publishers and organisations are easy to find those from small music countries would not be included in databases and bibliographic catalogues without ISMN to allow easy record management. If not to be found in such catalogues the publications are considered non-existent or not available.
• Facilitating identification, especially also those in less common languages 
  ISMN allows easy identification and overcomes the obstacles of foreign languages and scripts and can be read and used by anybody.
• Allowing including of titles in music catalogues and music in print publications 
  As the ISMN is designed for notated music it filters out music items from the big amount of other publications and makes searches fast and manageable.
• Facilitating ordering and distribution, especially internationally
  International standard numbers are the identifiers used by the trade for ordering and distribution. items without these numbers cannot be processed automatically and are neglected.