LibraryThing, Podcasting, and the 13-Digit ISBN
Well, 13 is my lucky number …
Here are three from the latest installment of the Librarians’ Index to the Internet’s New This Week.
- ISBNs, International Standard Book Numbers—a unique identifier for books—is moving to 13 digits instead of ten. isbn.org has more information and a conversion tool.
- LibraryThing, a way for people to catalog their own collections, has been getting quite a bit of buzz lately. Here it is in LII.
- Information Today has an article about podcasting for K-12 librarians. It includes some basic information about podcasting as well as why librarians should use the technology and links to various resources.
May 2nd, 2006 at 12:35 pm
The publishing industry has been transitioning to printing EANs for over a decade, and they are already being used heavily in inventory systems with barcode readers. This change doesn’t seem like it will have much impact.
May 2nd, 2006 at 12:54 pm
Hello! Welcome to the scratchpad!
Well, part of the issue here, as I understand it, is that the change is retrospective. Libraries have millions of volumes with ISBN numbers. How can they approach the issue? Also, ISBNs are often part of catalog records. Does the software need to change to handle the 13 digits?
May 2nd, 2006 at 3:02 pm
The number of volumes actually makes little difference. Since the preprinted barcodes are EANs/ISBN-13s already, and there is no need to change local numbering schemes, there is no need to do anything with the physical volumes during the transition. Even if books were preprinted with ISBN-10 barcodes (in some alternate universe where such a standard exists), the reader system could automatically add the 978 prefix to any such numbers (just like many inventory systems automatically convert 12-digit UPCs to 13-digit UPCs/EANs or 14-digit GTINs internally).
This is mostly an issue of updating old software that internally uses ISBN-10s, to use ISBN-13s/EANs. In many cases this was done years ago, in order to more easily accomodate barcodes, non-book inventory, and ordering systems that were already based on UPCs/EANs — and in the case of bookstores, to fit into modern POS systems which use UPCs/EANs and GTINs.
This transition was planned many years ago, and is progressing in exactly the way it was intended. If there is any significant impact, it will be for small libraries with very antiquated inventory and cataloging systems.
May 2nd, 2006 at 4:07 pm
Right. Exactly. I’m more or less pointing out the switch in case there are others like me who hadn’t heard about the change or people who need to adjust their catalogs. I wasn’t thinking people would need to do anything with the physical volumes themselves. It’s mostly the catalog records that some people might consider updating.