FW: [Sca-librarians] ISBNs (was Worldcat)

[John Sandstrom]

An addendum on ISBN's is that they really haven't been around all that long,
only 30 years or so.  Many of the materials we are looking for may be/are
older than that so don't have ISBN's at all.

Omar

-----Original Message-----
From:
sca-librarians-bounces+john.sandstrom=sbcglobal.net at lists.gallowglass.org
[mailto:sca-librarians-bounces+john.sandstrom=sbcglobal.net at lists.gallowglas
s.org] On Behalf Of Marc Carlson
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2005 7:44 AM
To: sca-librarians at lists.gallowglass.org
Subject: [Sca-librarians] ISBNs (was Worldcat)

Just an aside - I know it will be a bit of a shock, but ISBN numbers 
aren't the be-all and end-all of book identification that they seem to 
be in SCAcademics.  They can be useful, especailly if you want a 
specific edition of a particular work, but can be misleading when it 
keeps you from seeing the 40 other virtually identitical versions of the 
same work, but that have different ISBNs.

All an ISBN is is a publishers identification number, so they can keep 
track of specific editions and such.  They get used for more than that 
sure, but as with the OED, there are a lot of weird assumptions that get 
made about them too :)

These are 10 (or soon a 13) digit numbers that are broken into four 
categories by hyphens.  These are country-publisher-book-a check digit.

Solveig's ISBN is 4588321013 (which is, I believe: 4-588-32101-3) -- I 
cen tell you the title's in Japanese :) and this may be why she didn't 
give us a title (what with transliterating problems)  it is available on 
Amazon-Japan, but don't ask me what it says :)  Since I can't cut and 
paste those characters into firstsearch, I can't search by them.

4 is Japan.
588 is Hosei Univeristy Press
32101 is ?

Marc/Diarmaid
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