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Google has claimed that about 130 million books have been published (that factoid is all over the web). The number of 10-digit ISBNs is 1000 million (there's a
by bloak 4y ago
Google has claimed that about 130 million books have been published (that factoid is all over the web). The number of 10-digit ISBNs is 1000 million (there's a check digit) and people have only just started using 13-digit ISBNs that start with 979 instead of 978; but of course there must be lots of wasted ISBNs, for example when a publisher optimistically buys a big block and then goes bankrupt. Both those numbers suggest that the "ISBNdb" with less than 31 million ISBNs is far from complete.
The frequency of each top-level prefix (which tells you the geographical or language region) would be interesting. That would the first thing I'd calculate if I had the data on my disc.
- eCa 4y agoYeah, lots and lots of unused ISBNs. As an example, O’reilly has the 978-0-596 series. That’s a hundred thousand editions.
- adolph 4y agoAn ISBN is assigned to each separate edition and variation (except reprintings) of a publication. For example, an e-book, a paperback and a hardcover edition of the same book will each have a different ISBN. Additionally, there is address fragmentation; ISMB has blocks: ISBN issuance is country-specific, in that ISBNs are issued by the ISBN registration agency that is responsible for that country or territory regardless of the publication language. The ranges of ISBNs assigned to any particular country are based on the publishing profile of the country concerned, and so the ranges will vary depending on the number of books and the number, type, and size of publishers that are active. Some ISBN registration agencies are based in national libraries or within ministries of culture and thus may receive direct funding from the government to support their services. In other cases, the ISBN registration service is provided by organisations such as bibliographic data providers that are not government funded. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN
- ComputerGuru 4y agoI always loved how despite the massive domain differences, the ISBN situation is extremely similar to the IPv4/IPv6 situation (except more aggressively rent-seeking), with prefixes leased out to the old dogs, concerns about eventual address/isbn exhaustion, a scheme for mapping old ISB10 to new ISBN13 codes, etc etc.
- contingencies 4y agoMany things are published without ISBNs or have ISBNs and aren't traditional books. Here in China, to get an ISBN for a book you have to have a government approval process. So many publishers will print stuff on the proverbial sly, often at night, without assigning an ISBN. There's also book-like printed matter (pamphlets, maps, posters, puzzles, 3D/fold-out dioramas, etc.) which often lack an ISBN. So equating ISBN with book is not correct. Then there's all the stuff published pre-ISBN...
- 23skidoo 4y agoI'm a little perplexed by the ISBN system. The whole centralized affair, where you have to purchase ISBNs seems like a racket. ISBNs cost more in some countries (America) than they do in others (Canada). Not for any reason other than that they can get away with it. Much better would be a UUID generated from unique values, like a hash of the timestamp and publisher of a book. If you limit the length and number of the fields you hash to generate the UUID, you could even prove there will be zero collisions and eliminate any need to collision checks and thus an organization that charges money.
- xyzzy123 4y agoWhile archaic, ISBN doesn't seem a bad system to me. Short values are more reliable in retail situations. They can be typed in by hand or read with cheap scanners. You are of course free to publish without an ISBN if you don't care about the legacy ecosystem. There's nothing stopping anyone from creating or promoting an alternative but I don't think the incentives are there. There's not enough money in it, and I don't think the cost savings are enough to make a switch compelling.
- toomuchtodo 4y agoThere’s an interesting interaction of ISBNs with DOIs. https://guides.library.oregonstate.edu/c.php?g=285973&p=2442706 https://guides.library.oregonstate.edu/c.php?g=285973&p=2442... https://www.doi.org/factsheets/ISBN-A.html https://www.doi.org/factsheets/ISBN-A.html
- egypturnash 4y agoISBN was introduced in 1970. While hash functions did exist at this point (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hash_function#History) the computational resources generally available for this sort of thing were... rather lacking. The Apple II wasn't introduced until 1977. I will leave figuring out which hashing functions were known back in 1970, and experimenting with calculating them by hand, up to you. :)
- IncRnd 4y ago