Syracuse media library

All printers, publishers, or producers are legally required to deposit a number of copies of their work at designated entities, chiefly at NLT.

Legal deposit form

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number

ISBN application form

ISSN is an international standard number for periodicals, both printed and electronic. It is an eight-digit serial number allocated to the publisher by the Tunisian National ISSN Center located in the Legal Deposit and ISBN/ISSN Department within NLT.

Functions :
1. Identify all titles published locally and internationally
2. Ensure the speedy exchange of data between publishers, distributors, and bookshops.
3. Compile standardized catalogs.

Where is the ISSN placed?
* Printed publications
• printed in the top right-hand corner of the front cover page.
• Maybe printed in pages with editorial information (publisher, edition, etc.)
* Electronic publications
• The ISSN should be shown on the homepage or on the main menu if it is an internet publication.
How to obtain an ISSN ?
• The Tunisian ISSN Center, part of the Legal Deposit and ISBN/ISSN Department within NLT,is the entity in charge of allocating ISSNs to publishers.
• ISSNs are allocated after depositing 4 copies of the publication’s first issue as provided for in the legal deposit law (Law 37 of 2015)
• The publisher of the periodical may also fill in an ISSN application form to be sent electronically to the ISSN email issn@bnt.nat.tn

ISSN application form

As it pursues its policy of compiling indexes and catalogs, NLT is bent upon producing quality bibliographical and authority records within the Library’s general index, in line with internationally accepted principles as adopted by the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions (IFLA) and the Association Française de Normalisation (the French national organization for standardization, AFNOR).
Technical processing within NLT
1. Document processing
using the various fields provided for in the International Standard Bibliographic Description (ISBD):
– ISBD (M) for book (monographic publications)
–ISBD (CR) for periodicals
– ISBD (G/NBM) for non-book publications
– ISBD (CM) for maps
2. Analytical indexing based on a standard subject heading list and Shaban Khalifa’s Arabic standard topic heading list for Arabic-language books and the RAMEAU (Directory of Encyclopaedic and Unified Alphabet Authority and Subject Matter) for non-Arabic books to ensure that subject headings are standardized and to facilitate retrieval. This stage identifies the book’s topic and the areas of interest it contains.
In a first phase, from 2005 to 2021, the database used UNIMARC, an international bibliographic data entry and retrieval format designed to facilitate data sharing among documentary institutions. In a second phase, starting in the second half of 2021, NLT opted for the MARC 21 format as a step towards adopting the Resource Description and Access (RDA) format, a standard allowing for a more effective and faster access to information

Authority control is an essential step in providing for consistency byusing authority access points in the bibliographic file based on the authority file and establishing logical links between the authority file and the bibliographic files,i.e., between individual authority records and all bibliographic records for which the same authority access point is used.

Authority files allow for compiling high-quality indexes and making sure that links exist between the various forms of entries throughreferral or other means.

Authority records for Tunisian authors are drafted based on various references, chief among which are the Tunisian Digital Encyclopedia, publications by the Union of Tunisian Authors, as well as specialized bibliographies and glossaries. NLT has initiated a mechanism whereby a form is handed to visiting authors and to publishers performing the legal deposit procedure. The form allows for obtaining essential information about each publication as well as the correct spelling of names in Arabic and Latin scripts.

In the meantime, a unit has been set up to compile authority records for older books. In a first stage, the unit has been working on documents published between 1956 and 1968. This work requires careful checking and research to collect information on authors, especially those that cannot be found in references.

Manuscripts are indexed using a number of fields (title – author, including date of death – source of this information – beginning and end of the manuscript, etc.) as well as data regarding the manuscript’s other versions (muqābalāt), the identity of the drafter in the case of manuscripts written by students (samāʿāt), ownership (tamallukāt), and any other information useful to researchers. The goal in this indexing exercice is to achieve accuracy and exhaustiveness for which expertise is a requirement as well as a great deal of time and effort.

In the National Bibliography of Tunisia, book subjects are categorized using the Dewey Decimal Classification system. The same classification system is used for the open-access reading room.

Classification at NLT: A historical perspective

From 1970 to 1997, the international Dewey Decimal Classification standard was in use.