Graham, I would surmise that, along with all non-books, the zero ISBN
group includes anything before the early 1970's, when ISBN came into
use. (I believe the standard was passed in 1968 -- and it was a while
before it was widely used.) This represents another significant
difference between libraries and publishers: the publisher catalog
represents current availability; the library catalog includes past
products that are no longer available. As someone said, we'd have no
orphan book problem if libraries hadn't kept books that others had
abandoned. But that's exactly what we do.
kc
On 5/20/13 8:49 AM, Graham Bell wrote:
> And this accurately reflects the /raison d'être/ of the ISBN -- it is
> an identifier that identifies individual products. The EPUB, the PDF
> and the MOBI are all different products (even if they all have the
> same content), and may be available from different suppliers,
> priced differently, exclusively sold through different outlets,
> readable on different devices etc. Other identifiers (like the so far
> not widely used ISTC) can be used to collocate multiple products with
> essentially the same content.
>
> And as Laura correctly points out, /publishers/ assign ISBNs,
> primarily in order to facilitate trading of books among their trading
> partners. For physical books, this is a well-understood system. For
> e-books, not so much: some trading partners don't insist on ISBNs,
> others do. Others still can allocate ISBNs* if the publisher does not.
> And a few rely internally on proprietary identifiers†. /Best/ e-book
> practice on this is pretty clear these days, but /actual/ practice
> among publishers still varies.
>
> Now for Schlomo's MARC records, it's quite understandable that some
> have no ISBN and others have multiple ISBNs, since the MARC record is
> not bound to a particular 'product' quite as closely as a ISBN. Having
> said this, I do find the nearly 40% without ISBNs a bit surprising --
> are serial publications or other items that would not be eligible for
> ISBNs included in the sample?
>
>
> Graham Bell
> EDItEUR
>
>
> * that is, the /retailer/ can in theory allocate an ISBN if the
> publisher does not -- though in practice I don't think many retailers
> do this.
>
> † like 'proprietary EANs' (special GTIN-13s reserved for internal use
> only), or ASINs within Amazon. Because of their proprietary nature, I
> suspect these aren't much value in a library record
>
>
>
>
>
> EDItEUR Limited is a company limited by guarantee, registered in
> England no 2994705. Registered Office: United House, North Road,
> London N7 9DP, UK. Website: http://www.editeur.org
>
>
>
>>
>> On 5/20/13 7:49 AM, Laura Dawson wrote:
>>> Karen, at the ISBN Agency we've discovered that this is not
>>> consistent. Amazon doesn't supply an ISBN - the publisher does. And
>>> many publishers don't bother assigning an ISBN to their mobi files,
>>> because it's not a requirement at Amazon. BN/Nook assigns a
>>> proprietary EAN if no ISBN is provided by the publisher. Best
>>> practice dictates that different formats receive unique ISBNs, but
>>> many publishers don't adhere to that.
>>>
>>> The number soars, but not consistently.
>>>
>>> From: Karen Coyle <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> Reply-To: <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> Date: Monday, May 20, 2013 10:40 AM
>>> To: <[log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>>
>>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Instance of ISBNs in MARC records
>>>
>>> Another interesting piece of data:
>>>
>>> For eBooks, if they are distributed by different vendors (Amazon v.
>>> iTunes, etc.), each VENDOR provides a different ISBN. So the exact
>>> same thing gets more than one ISBN. Also, every different eBook
>>> format from the same vendor is supposed to have a different ISBN:
>>> PDF, ePub, Mobi, etc. So as we go more digital, the number of ISBNs
>>> expands soars!
>>>
>>> kc
>>>
>>> On 5/20/13 7:05 AM, David Weinberger wrote:
>>>> Is this information from Mac Elrod and Shlomo Sanders the frequency
>>>> of ISBNs publicly bloggable? It's very interesting.
>>>>
>>>> - David Weinberger
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Mon, May 20, 2013 at 9:19 AM, Shlomo Sanders
>>>> <[log in to unmask]
>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> From a large sample of data that we get from publishers:
>>>>
>>>> * Only 24.5% with one ISBN!
>>>> * 40% with multiple ISBNs!
>>>> * Largest group has no ISBN!
>>>>
>>>> *ISBN Count* *Percentage of records with X ISBNs*
>>>> 0 38.57%
>>>> 1 24.49%
>>>> 2 17.00%
>>>> 3 5.88%
>>>> 4 10.77%
>>>> 5 2.14%
>>>> 6 0.65%
>>>> 7 0.09%
>>>> 8 0.12%
>>>> 9 0.24%
>>>> 10 0.04%
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>> Shlomo
>>>> Experience the all-new, singing and dancing interactive Primo
>>>> brochure
>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>> From: Bibliographic Framework Transition Initiative Forum
>>>> [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of J. McRee Elrod
>>>> Sent: Sunday, May 19, 2013 20:34
>>>> To: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
>>>> Subject: Re: [BIBFRAME] Instance of ISBNs in MARC records
>>>> In SLC's database of over 300,000 records, over 169,000 have no
>>>> ISBN, over 114,000 have one, over 19,000 have two, and the
>>>> number of ISBNs ranges up to 36 in one record.
>>>> For us, Instances can't be based on ISBNs.
>>>> Total Records: 315389
>>>> 020s Records
>>>> 00 169021
>>>> 01 114221
>>>> 02 19745
>>>> 03 7403
>>>> 04 3238
>>>> 05 1149
>>>> 06 344
>>>> 07 118
>>>> 08 29
>>>> 09 42
>>>> 10 11
>>>> 11 16
>>>> 12 10
>>>> 13 12
>>>> 14 4
>>>> 15 5
>>>> 16 3
>>>> 17 7
>>>> 18 1
>>>> 19 1
>>>> 21 1
>>>> 22 1
>>>> 23 1
>>>> 25 3
>>>> 27 1
>>>> 28 1
>>>> 36 1
>>>> __ __ J. McRee (Mac) Elrod ([log in to unmask]
>>>> <mailto:[log in to unmask]>)
>>>> {__ | / Special Libraries Cataloguing
>>>> HTTP://www.slc.bc.ca/ <http://www.slc.bc.ca/>
>>>> ___} |__
>>>> \__________________________________________________________
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Karen Coyle
>>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>>> skype: kcoylenet
>>
>> --
>> Karen Coyle
>> [log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
>> ph: 1-510-540-7596
>> m: 1-510-435-8234
>> skype: kcoylenet
>
--
Karen Coyle
[log in to unmask] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
