16 Where do ISBNs come from?
Description
This article is from the Books FAQ, by Evelyn C. Leeper eleeper@jaguar.stc.lucent.com with numerous contributions by others.
16 Where do ISBNs come from?
Each country has an issuing agency that assigns numbers to publishers, then
the publishers assign numbers to each title. In the US, it's the R. R.
Bowker Co., publishers of "Books in Print" [see question #2]. Look at the
beginning of the first volume for details. I'm not sure who does it in
Canada; check "Canadian Books in Print."
Here's how it works:
First digit:
0 or 1 for English-speaking countries; other numbers
elsewhere.
Second part [varying length]:
The number assigned to the publisher. Bigger
publishers have smaller numbers and vice versa.
Third part [varying length]:
The number for the individual book and edition.
(The paperback will have a different ISBN from the
hardback of the same title, for example.)
Tenth digit:
0-9 or X. This is a check digit (we just had a long,
boring thread about how this is formed from a
mathematical formula). The point is that it allows
a computer to alert you if you made a typo.
Thanks to Robert Teeter (rteeter@netcom.com) for this.
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