4 ms·

The thing is, ISBNs aren't hierarchical --- they are bought in blocks (or even individually at an exorbitant markup, says the guy who bought one to reprint a si

The thing is, ISBNs aren't hierarchical --- they are bought in blocks (or even individually at an exorbitant markup, says the guy who bought one to reprint a single book), so this doesn't show anything really interesting/useful. A visualization using LoC or even Dewey Decimal would be far more useful, esp. if it also linked to public domain and copyright-free repositories/lists, say an interactive and visual version of John Mark Ockerbloom's: https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/ https://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/

MarceColl 2y ago
It shows what they want to show, which is mostly how much of the world books they have. Hierarchical has nothing to do with it.
- Finnucane 2y ago
  It only sort of shows that. ISBNs are issued by edition, not title, so many books would have more than one. And books published before 1970 or so might not be represented at all if they have no recent edition.
- NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
  They can't even have a tiny fraction of the world's books. Each edition of the book gets a new ISBN... if a book is released as a paperback, hardback, kindle edition, pdf, and epub then there are supposed to be five ISBNs. The vast, vast majority have only been released as dead-tree versions. They have none of those. The books they scan may have an ISBN, but the scans do not have them. Like all Project Gutenberg books, their books have no ISBNs at all. From a strict point of view, they've released new editions of these books.
  - nickelpro 2y ago
    Worthless semantics in the context of the mission of the project. What you've described is that the archived content can be mapped to multiple ISBNs. It's clear the only element of concern here is the content itself. The failure to preserve a particular binding or printer's choice of typeface is irrelevant. Failing to recognize this requires an almost malicious level of pedantry
    - jameshart 2y ago
      A successful archival of one of those ISBNs will light up; four of those ISBNs remain dark. Yet they have that content archived. It means that lighting up the entire grid is not necessary to achieve their goal. Indeed a bigger problem is that it’s much harder to know which areas of the grid are never going to light up because the ISBN has not been used.
      - nickelpro 2y ago
        This is a separate problem, but a notable one. Lighting up the entire grid is still the goal, you're describing the problem of ensuring the right set of squares is illuminated for each piece of archived content. One is a problem of archiving the content, the other is a problem of bookkeeping.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      >Worthless semantics in the context of the mission of the project. Hardly worthless... often times, the edition of the book matters as much as the title. Steven King wrote two books named The Stand, and one isn't anything like the other. He pulled a Lucas pretty early on. He's hardly the only author to ever do this. But it's not just authors either. Editors, collectors, translators all make their mark, and give you works that though they might be slightly different to you, the differences actually matter to the rest of us. It's not that you're ignorant that offends me, it's the arrogance about a subject you seem to know so little about that makes it difficult to tolerate. There is no pedantry here, just a desire to actually preserve books and to organize them.
      - nickelpro 2y ago
        > Steven King wrote two books named The Stand, and one isn't anything like the other Then those two texts would map to different ISBNS, or perhaps each maps to multiple different ISBNs, it doesn't matter. That some texts exist with the same title but different content is similarly irrelevant. The content is all that matters. Two different bodies of content, two different entries in the archive. Each entry may map to one or more ISBN numbers. > the differences actually matter to the rest of us The only differences that matter are what matters to the archive that made the blog post. Your concerns are for entirely different things, which is fine, but don't say the OP's concerns or initiatives are impossible or ill-suited based on a criteria you're projecting onto them.
  - mmooss 2y ago
    > The books they scan may have an ISBN, but the scans do not have them. Like all Project Gutenberg books, their books have no ISBNs at all. From a strict point of view, they've released new editions of these books. Are you saying they actively remove ISBN numbers from scans? If I downloaded one of the books, it wouldn't have an ISBN? Why? That seems like a bunch of extra processing per book, makes it harder for users to specifically identify a book, and probably does nothing for legality. Also, can people search by ISBN?
    - Tomte 2y ago
      > Are you saying they actively remove ISBN numbers from scans? No, he‘s playing the pointless „well, actually a scan of a book is a different thing from the book itself“ game.
      - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
        No, I'm saying that the ISBN doesn't describe titles, it describes editions, and editions matter.
        nickelpro 2y ago
        You said: > From a strict point of view, they've released new editions of these books. And this is clearly a semantically worthless distinction from the point of view of the archive. When different editions have different content, archiving those differences in that content may matter (arguably not for simple typographical corrections, printing errors, etc). When different ISBNs have identical content, it is totally irrelevant to the goals of the archive.
        Finnucane 2y ago
        A text may be derived from an edition with an isbn, but the isbn wouldn’t apply to that file, it is effectively a different edition.
        edflsafoiewq 2y ago
est31 2y ago
ISBN's are hierarchical, what do you mean? Like Gaul, ISBNs are divided into multiple parts, where one part is for the language, another is for the publisher, and the last is for the title. The last part is a checksum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN#Overview
- WillAdams 2y ago
  Yes, but this internal hierarchy for an issued number doesn't tell anything beyond those facts about a specific edition of a specific text. One can't use ISBNs alone to create a hierarchical listing of texts which is useful for anything beyond browsing by language/publisher/order in which the ISBN was generated. A visual and interactive representation of books by LoC or some other cataloging system would actually be useful.
  - convolvatron 2y ago
    totally agree, but thats not in the data. however, since blocks are assigned to agencies associated with countries and publishers, you might find some utility in showing coverage by likely language and/or country of origin and date.
  - PaulHoule 2y ago
    I got into an argument with the manager of South End Press back in '94 about whether 'Futuresplash' (soon to be Macromedia Flash) had a future, he thought it did and he was right. Years later I was working at the library and got a little bit steamed because South End Press was reusing ISBN's after books went out of print which was allowed but, I think, lame. One of my strategies for researching a topic is looking a few up in the OPAC, finding them in the stacks, and finding more books on the topic in those areas. (In the Library of Congress system, machine vision could be under QA56 with the rest of computer science or around TA1630, thus "areas".) From time to time I've thought about trying to replicate the feel of this with some kind of UI given that our library moved a lot of the collection into deep archives and we have a very fast 'Borrow Direct' service with other peers)
omoikane 2y ago
One thing it shows is how ISBNs are allocated much faster than they are used, judging by the amount of black pixels. The image contains 1000*800 pixels at 2500 ISBNs per pixel, so it's visualizing 2e9 ISBNs. ISBN-13 contains 12 digits plus one check digit, so we might have expected the image to be 500 times bigger/denser than the current image. The fact that it's at its current size suggests that only ISBNs with 978 and 979 prefixes are included, and since the bottom half is more sparse, that probably corresponds to the new 979 range.

MarceColl 2y ago

It shows what they want to show, which is mostly how much of the world books they have. Hierarchical has nothing to do with it.

Finnucane 2y ago
It only sort of shows that. ISBNs are issued by edition, not title, so many books would have more than one. And books published before 1970 or so might not be represented at all if they have no recent edition.
NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
They can't even have a tiny fraction of the world's books. Each edition of the book gets a new ISBN... if a book is released as a paperback, hardback, kindle edition, pdf, and epub then there are supposed to be five ISBNs. The vast, vast majority have only been released as dead-tree versions. They have none of those. The books they scan may have an ISBN, but the scans do not have them. Like all Project Gutenberg books, their books have no ISBNs at all. From a strict point of view, they've released new editions of these books.
- nickelpro 2y ago
  Worthless semantics in the context of the mission of the project. What you've described is that the archived content can be mapped to multiple ISBNs. It's clear the only element of concern here is the content itself. The failure to preserve a particular binding or printer's choice of typeface is irrelevant. Failing to recognize this requires an almost malicious level of pedantry
  - jameshart 2y ago
    A successful archival of one of those ISBNs will light up; four of those ISBNs remain dark. Yet they have that content archived. It means that lighting up the entire grid is not necessary to achieve their goal. Indeed a bigger problem is that it’s much harder to know which areas of the grid are never going to light up because the ISBN has not been used.
    - nickelpro 2y ago
      This is a separate problem, but a notable one. Lighting up the entire grid is still the goal, you're describing the problem of ensuring the right set of squares is illuminated for each piece of archived content. One is a problem of archiving the content, the other is a problem of bookkeeping.
  - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
    >Worthless semantics in the context of the mission of the project. Hardly worthless... often times, the edition of the book matters as much as the title. Steven King wrote two books named The Stand, and one isn't anything like the other. He pulled a Lucas pretty early on. He's hardly the only author to ever do this. But it's not just authors either. Editors, collectors, translators all make their mark, and give you works that though they might be slightly different to you, the differences actually matter to the rest of us. It's not that you're ignorant that offends me, it's the arrogance about a subject you seem to know so little about that makes it difficult to tolerate. There is no pedantry here, just a desire to actually preserve books and to organize them.
    - nickelpro 2y ago
      > Steven King wrote two books named The Stand, and one isn't anything like the other Then those two texts would map to different ISBNS, or perhaps each maps to multiple different ISBNs, it doesn't matter. That some texts exist with the same title but different content is similarly irrelevant. The content is all that matters. Two different bodies of content, two different entries in the archive. Each entry may map to one or more ISBN numbers. > the differences actually matter to the rest of us The only differences that matter are what matters to the archive that made the blog post. Your concerns are for entirely different things, which is fine, but don't say the OP's concerns or initiatives are impossible or ill-suited based on a criteria you're projecting onto them.
- mmooss 2y ago
  > The books they scan may have an ISBN, but the scans do not have them. Like all Project Gutenberg books, their books have no ISBNs at all. From a strict point of view, they've released new editions of these books. Are you saying they actively remove ISBN numbers from scans? If I downloaded one of the books, it wouldn't have an ISBN? Why? That seems like a bunch of extra processing per book, makes it harder for users to specifically identify a book, and probably does nothing for legality. Also, can people search by ISBN?
  - Tomte 2y ago
    > Are you saying they actively remove ISBN numbers from scans? No, he‘s playing the pointless „well, actually a scan of a book is a different thing from the book itself“ game.
    - NoMoreNicksLeft 2y ago
      No, I'm saying that the ISBN doesn't describe titles, it describes editions, and editions matter.
      - nickelpro 2y ago
        You said: > From a strict point of view, they've released new editions of these books. And this is clearly a semantically worthless distinction from the point of view of the archive. When different editions have different content, archiving those differences in that content may matter (arguably not for simple typographical corrections, printing errors, etc). When different ISBNs have identical content, it is totally irrelevant to the goals of the archive.
        Finnucane 2y ago
        A text may be derived from an edition with an isbn, but the isbn wouldn’t apply to that file, it is effectively a different edition.
        edflsafoiewq 2y ago

est31 2y ago

ISBN's are hierarchical, what do you mean? Like Gaul, ISBNs are divided into multiple parts, where one part is for the language, another is for the publisher, and the last is for the title. The last part is a checksum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN#Overview https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN#Overview

WillAdams 2y ago
Yes, but this internal hierarchy for an issued number doesn't tell anything beyond those facts about a specific edition of a specific text. One can't use ISBNs alone to create a hierarchical listing of texts which is useful for anything beyond browsing by language/publisher/order in which the ISBN was generated. A visual and interactive representation of books by LoC or some other cataloging system would actually be useful.
- convolvatron 2y ago
  totally agree, but thats not in the data. however, since blocks are assigned to agencies associated with countries and publishers, you might find some utility in showing coverage by likely language and/or country of origin and date.
- PaulHoule 2y ago
  I got into an argument with the manager of South End Press back in '94 about whether 'Futuresplash' (soon to be Macromedia Flash) had a future, he thought it did and he was right. Years later I was working at the library and got a little bit steamed because South End Press was reusing ISBN's after books went out of print which was allowed but, I think, lame. One of my strategies for researching a topic is looking a few up in the OPAC, finding them in the stacks, and finding more books on the topic in those areas. (In the Library of Congress system, machine vision could be under QA56 with the rest of computer science or around TA1630, thus "areas".) From time to time I've thought about trying to replicate the feel of this with some kind of UI given that our library moved a lot of the collection into deep archives and we have a very fast 'Borrow Direct' service with other peers)

omoikane 2y ago

One thing it shows is how ISBNs are allocated much faster than they are used, judging by the amount of black pixels. The image contains 1000*800 pixels at 2500 ISBNs per pixel, so it's visualizing 2e9 ISBNs. ISBN-13 contains 12 digits plus one check digit, so we might have expected the image to be 500 times bigger/denser than the current image. The fact that it's at its current size suggests that only ISBNs with 978 and 979 prefixes are included, and since the bottom half is more sparse, that probably corresponds to the new 979 range.