The Copyright Hub has launched its pilot website. It is a gateway to information about copyright in the UK and gives users the possibility to learn about copyright in general, to get permission to use s.b. else's work or to find out about protection of their own works. View the website here.

The International Music Council accepted two new member countries and now has 45 national music councils. A list of these can be found here.

On 20/21 May 2013 the International ISMN Agency attended a regional meeting of ISBN and ISMN agencies from the Balkan region and around. The event was excellently organized by Emilija Brasic from the Serbian ISBN agency and her colleagues from the National Library of Serbia in Belgrade. Participants came from Bulgaria, Croatia, Montenegro, Serbia, Slovenia and Srpska.
In a special workshop lively discussions brought an overview of music publishing in these countries. The situation differs a lot, e.g. in some countries there are only about 10 music publishers, in others 100. Also, there is no more than one music store in Serbia anymore whereas there are several special music shops in Slovenia. 
ISMN is used by nearly all publishers in the Balkan region, due to a good information policy of the agencies who offered seminars to music publishers and explain the ISMN system on their libraries' websites.
It was evident that under the prevalent circumstances of economic decline music departments in libraries become the more important to give users access to sheet music.
For their daily ISMN administration the agencies use special software (Cobiss or Aleph) which also produces barcodes for the publications. 

The 57th country to join the ISMN system is Iceland. The ISMN agency is situated at the National Library in Reykjavík.

The ISMN Annual General Meeting 2013 will take place on 13 September 2013 in Washington D.C.. The Library of Congress will kindly host this 21st Panel meeting and 7th AGM of the International ISMN Agency.