# Discussion about ISBN <-> URN

Patrik Faltstrom (paf@nada.kth.se)
Sun, 7 Aug 1994 11:16:44 +0200

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    Message-Id: <9408070912.AA00564@nada.kth.se>

    Date: Sun, 7 Aug 1994 11:16:44 +0200

    To: "Karen R. Sollins" <sollins@lcs.mit.edu>, uri@bunyip.com, bajan@bunyip.com,

    From: paf@nada.kth.se (Patrik Faltstrom)

    Subject: Discussion about ISBN <-> URN

At 22.44 8/6/94 -0400, Karen R. Sollins wrote:
> o Legacy support: The scheme must permit the support of existing
> legacy naming systems. For example, ISBN numbers, ISO public
> identifiers, UPC product codes and the like are naming schemes
> which should be allowed to be embedded within the URN system.

I have one question about the question about uniqueness of URN's.

When working with ISBN's, it is the publisher which is responsible for
the mappings from IBN to the publication itself. Each publisher have a
specified number, and each publisher also exists inside a country or
language area. So, each ISBN consists of

1) Language or country code
2) Publisher ID
3) Book ID
4) Checksum

The problem I am thinking of is the reuse of ISBN. Each publisher can
itself decide if a reprinting of a book should keep the same ISBN or get
a new one. I know of publishers that give new ISBN's to just reprints
so they can keep track of which books are "old" and "new". Other publishers
only change ISBN when a new edition is printed.

When a book are out of stock, and have been so for a while (a year or so)
teh publisher can reuse the ISBN to a new book.

These two things was a pain for us in the company I worked for which
reselled book for about 3000 schools in sweden from about 4000 publishers.
We had to have a very specified database over all 150000 books we reselled
which in fact didn't have the ISBN as unique identifier, just because it
wasn't. We had to have "links" between different prints and different
editions which could have the same ISBN, but not always. We had though
most problems with publishers who reused the ISBN too fast.

I don't know if this discussion about the ISBN should stay here, but I
really would like a comment from the library community which handles
old books (we only dealed with new ones) how they solve the problem.

The problem in the document that I see is that we have a contradiction:

1) Global uniqueness
2) Ability to use ISBN

I am perfectly satisfied if we with "global uniqueness" mean that it
is the publisher who is responsible for the mapping from one ISBN
to a publication, i.e. the ISBN number might not be globally unique
over time. The use of ISBN as URN must be possible.

One small editorial blurp... ISBN stands for "International Standard
Book Number" so you don't have to use the word "number" after the
acronym ISBN. Just remove "number".

With regards, Patrik

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