3 ms·

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

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