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type="cite">
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:
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type="cite">
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.
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:
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type="cite">
Is this
information from Mac Elrod and Shlomo Sanders
the frequency of ISBNs publicly bloggable?
It's very interesting.
- David
Weinberger
--
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
