Talk:International Standard Book Number
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See http://www.isbn.spk-berlin.de/html/prefix/allpref.htm for details.
Broadly:
0 English speaking areas 1 English speaking areas 2 French speaking areas 3 German speaking areas 4 Japan 5 Former USSR 6 (undefined?) 7 China 8x various: see the cite above for details 9x various: see the cite above for details
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[edit] Archieve 01 (Jan 05- March 05 Archived)
Old and outdated talk moved to Talk:International_Standard_Book_Number/Archive01 As was confused (especially with date order) with the talk being moved above. // FrankB 17:59, 8 July 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Any new business
???
[edit] Maths
"In fact, no system of weights used to compute a check digit based on modulus 10 (or any even modulus) can detect all single digit errors and adjacent transposition errors."
Well how about weights 1000000000 100000000 10000000 1000000 100000 10000 1000 100 10 1 modulus 100000000000000? And we talk about primes, 2 is a prime, but not very useful. Do we mean "co-prime with and larger than 10"? Rich Farmbrough, 15:47 4 September 2006 (GMT).
- And in fact, a little WP:OR shows that 3,1,3,1... with mod 20 will pick up all single digit errors and adjacent transposition errors. Rich Farmbrough, 16:11 4 September 2006 (GMT).
Wouldn't it be good to say something re. the origins of SBN codes. I had always assumed that ISBN codes came into operation in 1970, because it is on this date that you start finding the numbers appearing on the books themselves. As to the SBN codes, I notice, for instance, that an SBN code appears on HSMO publications as early as 1959. Cf: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0116700750/026-0325148-9310042.
When and by whom were SBNs conceived? What is the story behind prefix '1'?
[edit] Discuss links here (spam concern)
The ISBN page is a magnet for spam links. It happens that people will add items to the External Links section with no history comment and with no discussion on the talk page. When this happens, those links may be removed by other editors in regular cleanups. Please propose your new link here and explain its value (with reference to what is already available) if you don't want it to be cleaned out. (You can help!) EdJohnston 21:38, 25 October 2006 (UTC)
[edit] Testing of invalid ISBNs within the publishing industry
Since the ISBN check digit is a means of finding and correcting errors, it is of interest to know if and when the actual checks get performed. Does anyone object if the following words are added to the article?
- Some book-ordering systems, like R.R.Bowker's Books In Print, will not even attempt to search for a book if given an invalid ISBN. It is clearly to the publishers' advantage to issue their books with valid ISBNs, although not all bookselling web sites will do the check. For instance www.amazon.com, as of October 2006, listed some books for sale that were published with invalid ISBNs. Essentially they are passing along to the customer without further ado whatever ISBN was assigned by the publisher. EdJohnston 20:05, 10 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] ISBN Format
I thought that the format was one digit for the language, four digits for the publisher, four digits for the item number, and one digit for the check.--Luke Elms 14:59, 22 November 2006 (UTC)
- No, it's more complicated. See [1] for the region codes, known as group identifiers. 0 and 1 cover the English-speaking countries. The less common language areas get longer and longer codes. For instance, Armenia gets its own group identifier, which is 99930. This leaves fewer digits to distinguish the publishers, but there are not as many of them for the smaller language groups. EdJohnston 04:34, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
[edit] 'Happens to coincide' marked by User:Pascal666 with 'fact' tag
When adding an example two months ago an editor used the following language:
- Some books have more than one language area code, e.g. A.M.Yaglom, Correlation Theory... , published by Springer Verlag has ISBN 0-387-96331-6 and ISBN 3-540-96331-6. Note that in this case Springer has publisher codes for both language areas, and chooses to use the same item number. The check digit happens to coincide.
There is more discussion of this on User_talk:Pascal666. Unless anyone objects I am planning to remove the phrase 'The check digit happens to coincide'. I actually don't see the problem with it, but I also don't see why it would have been considered advantageous by Springer in the first place. A coinciding check digit might increase the chances of mixing up two distinct ISBNs. EdJohnston 19:19, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
