Talk:International Standard Book Number

Archives of old Discussions - Do Not Move

Archive 01 (Jan 05 – March 05 Archived) Old and outdated talk moved to Talk:International_Standard_Book_Number/Archive01 As was confused (especially with date order) with the talk being moved above.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)

Archive 02 (April 1, 2005 to December 31, 2007)

Archive 03 (January 1, 2008 to December 31, 2009)

Archive 04 (January 1, 2010 to December 31, 2010)

Move Proposal Discussion - FIXED Discussion, do not Archive for now

The following discussion is an archived discussion of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

No consensus to move. Vegaswikian (talk) 21:48, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

International Standard Book Number → ISBN — WP:COMMONNAME and this discussion. Note that ISBN redirects here. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 19:57, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Oppose - There are two names that are about equally good. When you need a short form, use 'ISBN', as in 'ISBN agencies.' When you want a more informative name, use 'International Standard Book Number.' I don't see the benefit of changing the name on the article. Both the short and the long form get many millions of Google hits, so the advice under WP:ABBR#Acronyms as words in article titles suggests that the MOS will let us go either way on this. EdJohnston (talk) 21:29, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

• Question What is the other name that could be "ISBN"? ISBN redirects here and there is no hatnote to see something else. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 00:28, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you say more about this? I'm not perceiving the problem. 'ISBN' redirects to only one place. It does not require disambiguation, so there is no hatnote on ISBN. EdJohnston (talk) 00:42, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

Ah I thought you meant there are two equally good meanings to "ISBN" not that "ISBN" and "International Standard Book Number" are equally good. I see now. Thanks for your time. —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 23:07, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

• Oppose per WP:NAME: "Abbreviations and acronyms are generally avoided [as article titles] unless the subject is almost exclusively known by its abbreviation." I don't think this is such a case. Deor (talk) 23:29, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
• Oppose For the reasons given by EdJohnston and Deor. Whilst common, ISBN isn't common enough to justify changing the page title. Skinsmoke (talk) 17:44, 13 March 2010 (UTC)
• weak Support. Partially per precedent: NATO, OPEC, HTML. The only example I tried that didn't follow the pattern was CSS (a redirect to cascading style sheets), or those that led to disambig pages (DRM, etc). Partially, because I've never heard/seen the full title referred to outside of Wikipedia articles; everyone uses/refers to "the ISBN". Either way is fine though. Not important enough to argue over. -- Quiddity (talk) 01:56, 14 March 2010 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the proposal. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Clean Up and Synopsis rewrite

I am going to clean up the first part and add some material.

Prior to doing this I am going to make a list of fixes and changes. Then archive all the comments. Then a first draft rewrite. Is there anybody maintaining this?

Thanks meatclerk (talk) 11:04, 26 February 2011 (UTC)

"Standard Book Numbering" redirects here...

...so can someone tell me where to find the article on "Standard Book Number", which the British used until 1974? This article has just about no information on it. Sincerely, SamBlob (talk) 21:52, 24 May 2011 (UTC)

The original Standard Book Number is actually mentioned in the lead sentence, but if you blink you could miss it. See ".. based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster.." EdJohnston (talk) 01:23, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Does each book have only one ISBN?

When looking at books listed in a major online book-store, I see that all the English-language books I encounter have two ISBNs: one starting "ISBN-10:" and the other starting "ISBN-13:" I assume the 10 and 13 refer to the checking system. But the two numbers (i.e., that which follows the 13 and 10 respectively are different. Kdammers (talk) 01:11, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

See http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/transition.asp. The ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 numbers for the same book should differ only in the prefix and the check digit. Eventually the ISBN-10 will disappear. EdJohnston (talk) 01:36, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

Here is an example where that does not seem to be the case (and I could add scores from the same source): 저자 : Stine, R. L. | 출판사 : Scholastic Paperbacks

교보문고 적립금은 다릅니다 모을 필요 없는 정직한 적립금 -10원의 적립금도 언제든지 사용 가능합니다. 온/오프 구별없는 통합 적립금 -한 번의 적립으로 인터넷에선 물론, 교보문고 전국지점 어디서나 사용할 수 있습니다. 중간 절차 없는 간편한 적립금 -상품평을 쓰거나 구매확인을 해야하는 불편한 적립금이 아닙니다 적립금은 구매하신 상품의 적립률에 따라 지급되며, 고객님의 주문이 출고 완료된 후 자동 적립됩니다. 쿠폰 또는 적립금 사용 시, 예상 적립금은 변동될 수 있습니다. (주문 후 취소, 출고 후 반품시에는 해당 적립금은 다시 차감 됩니다.)

출간일 : 2008년 11월 | 123쪽 | 언어 : English | ISBN-10 : 0545035228 / ISBN-13 : 9780545035224 Kdammers (talk) 01:49, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

The pattern is followed. The prefix '978' is on the ISBN-13 and not the ISBN-10. The two numbers also differ in their final digit since that is the check digit. EdJohnston (talk) 02:46, 5 July 2011 (UTC)

ISBN-13 check one module too much?

The check for ISBN-13 appears to be incorrect. The entire calculation is twice mod 10, which seems redundant. Can anyone confirm this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.125.137.115 (talk) 21:50, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Later SBN usage

An interesting oddity I've just noticed: [some?] Heinemann books continued to quote SBNs on their title page as late as 1984 editions. They're valid ISBNs, of course, they just hadn't changed to the ten-digit format and still printed them without leading zeroes. Old habits die hard... Shimgray | talk | 13:30, 19 October 2011 (UTC)

Bug In ISBN-10 C++ Code

It doesn't account for an 'X' check digit (represents 10). 205.178.9.251 (talk) 07:56, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree. The C++ code is broken and should be fixed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.5.112.166 (talk) 18:45, 25 January 2012 (UTC)

Reference 20 is down

The reference 20 (ISBN guide) is down, making the whole article only "probably valid" :-) (I'm quite sure it's fine, but anyway) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 193.190.168.73 (talk) 17:00, 10 January 2012 (UTC)

Americanization of the ISBN Issuance Section

The way the section on ISBN issuance was written it was possible to read it so that people in the other 150 plus countries had to buy their ISBNs from Bowker in the United States. I had been wondering (I'm a Canadian Publisher) where the incorrect information was coming from, and I suspect they've all been getting it here. I've made a change to distract from the American centric viewpoint, but it is nearly 3:30 AM, and I'll admit that I'm two thirds asleep, so what I wrote may not make a lot of sense. There needs to be more stress at the start of the section on each country handling their own ISBN issuance, with Bowker, Collections Canada, and whoever else mentioned at the end I think. That should help steer people in the right direction for their country. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 08:28, 11 February 2012 (UTC)

I've re-written this section, and moved it to the main body, where it makes more sense. I'm still not happy with it though. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 22:01, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the wikification of the section Peter E. James, wikification has always been one of my weaknesses. UrbanTerrorist (talk) 05:03, 25 February 2012 (UTC)