3. IAML Report

Dr. Jaenecke explained IAML's role in the development of the ISMN:

«The idea of the ISMN was promoted by the UK Branch of IAML (International Association of Music Libraries, Music Archives and Music Information Centres), especially by Alan Pope, at that time head of Blackwell's Music Library Department, and Malcolm Lewis, then music librarian in Nottingham. It was a fortunate constellation that a music trade specialist and a librarian cooperated on this project. Both presented a draft of the structure and the application of the ISMN at the international IAML conference at Amsterdam in 1987.

At the 1989 IAML conference in Oxford the Bibliography Commission which was then under my chairmanship discussed the draft and decided that the French, German, UK and other branches should file ISMN as an ISO work project with their national standards institutes (AFNOR, DIN, BSI).

In 1993 two important meetings took place in Ottawa and in Paris, at which the ISMN draft was finalised and afterwards approved and published by ISO.
IAML has been working on several international projects for years, e.g. Répertoire International des Sources Musicales (RISM) and Répertoire International de Littérature Musicale (RILM), and therefore many music librarians were eager to have a unique international identification and numbering system for printed music, in analogy to ISBN.»