ISSN# for Norwegian weblogs denied (Anders Jacobsen's blog)

August 29, 2002

ISSN# for Norwegian weblogs denied

As I announced last week, I applied to the Norwegian ISSN office for an ISSN number for this weblog, which - I dare claim - is a reasonably periodical publication. Well, anyway, I have received the official verdict:

Date: Wed, 28 Aug 2002 12:36:01 +0200
From: ISSN Norway representative
To: andersja
Subject: andersja's blog

Til Anders Jacobsen

Takk for henvendelse. Jeg har sett på "publikasjonen" under adressen du har oppgitt i brevet og funnet ut at jeg ikke kan tildele ISSN til denne. Jeg ser på denne som kontinuerlig oppdatert hjemmeside og ikke vanlig periodisk dokument. Fordi definisjonen av et periodikum er meget vid, kan hvert nasjonalt senter selv begrense omfanget av periodika som tildeles ISSN. ISSN Norge har bestemt at hjemmesider (inkludert blog) ikke tildeles ISSN.

Håper et det er i orden.

Med vennlig hilsen
n n
ISSN Norge

Briefly summarized for our non-Norwegian-speaking readers:

Thank you for your request. I have taken a look at the "publication" at the address you referenced in your application and decided that I cannot assign an ISSN for it. I consider it a continuously updated homepage and not a regular, periodic document. Since the definition of a periodic publication is very wide, every national centre can limit the scope of publications that are assigned ISSNs. ISSN Norway has decided that homepages (including blogs) are not assigned ISSNs.

I hope this is ok.

Sincerely,...

Take that, Jill (blogging at ISSN 1502-8003) ;-)

Ah well ... I was just trying to do my share for the librarians... I'm sure we both (the librarians and me) will live happily on...

Update 2002-08-29:
I emailed ISSN Norway for further detailing on the justification for refusing ISSN nubmers for all blogs. Excerpts from the answer below:

Jeg er helt enig med deg når det gjelder faglige innslag. Det er mye interessant stoff der. Det som jeg reagerer på når det gjelder blog er, at det er mye, mye mer enn faglig stoff der.

Da vi tildelte ISSN til [tidlige weblogs] var denne publikasjonsformen forholdsvis ny for oss.

Senere har ISSN-miljøet internasjonalt kommet frem til at vi ikke tildeler ISSN til bl. a. personlige hjemmesider:

"Commercial web sites, personal web pages, web pages which contain only links to other URLs and short-lived or dead web sites are not considered as having priority for ISSN assignments" (utdrag fra ISSN International Centres homepage).

Siden vi anser at blog faller innen denne kategorien får den heller ikke et slikt nummer.

Translation:

I agree with you regarding andersja's blog containing relevant content. There is a lof of interesting material there. What I react to with blogs in general is that there is a lot, a lot more than relevant content in them.

When we assigned ISSN numbers to early weblogs, this way of publication was relatively new to us.

Later, the ISSN establishment has reached a consensus where we don't assign ISSN to among other things personal webpages:

"Commercial web sites, personal web pages, web pages which contain only links to other URLs and short-lived or dead web sites are not considered as having priority for ISSN assignments" (excerpt from ISSN International Centre's homepage).

Since we consider blogs to sort under this category, they will therefore not be assigned an ISSN number.