ISSN and its brothers: the long march of international codes. First part. UNESCO, ISO and the first born

Abstract

The international bibliographic identification system based on numeric codes celebrates its 40^th anniversary. UNESCO and ISO have worked together for a long time in order to disseminate and support this technique for identifying publishing products. The ISSN code for serial publications was the first to be standardized by an ISO standard (3297:1975). The paper describes the main steps of its international diffusion, briefly mentioning also the additional identifier codes created after the ISSN. Finally, the huge information capacity of these international systems is briefly outlined (more details in the second part).
(NB: this is the first part of a more extensive study. The second part will be published in AIB studi 3/2015)