The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a unique numeric commercial book identifier based upon the 9-digit Standard Book Numbering (SBN) code created by Gordon Foster, Emeritus Professor of Statistics at Trinity College, Dublin, for the booksellers and stationers W. H. Smith and others in 1965.
The 10-digit ISBN format was developed by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and was published in 1970 as international standard ISO 2108. (However, the 9-digit SBN code was used in the United Kingdom until 1974.) An SBN may be converted to an ISBN by prepending the digit '0'. Currently, the ISO TC 46/SC 9 is responsible for the ISBN. The ISO on-line facility only refers back to 1978.
Since 1 January 2007, ISBNs have contained 13 digits, a format that is compatible with Bookland EAN-13s.
Occasionally, a book may appear without a printed ISBN if it is printed privately or the author does not follow the usual ISBN procedure; however, this can be rectified later.
A similar numeric identifier, the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), identifies periodical publications such as magazines.
Read more about International Standard Book Number: Overview, Check Digits, EAN Format Used in Barcodes, and Upgrading
Famous quotes containing the words standard, book and/or number:
“As long as male behavior is taken to be the norm, there can be no serious questioning of male traits and behavior. A norm is by definition a standard for judging; it is not itself subject to judgment.”
—Myriam Miedzian, U.S. author. Boys Will Be Boys, ch. 1 (1991)
“With a few exceptions, the critics of children’s books are remarkably lenient souls.... Most of us assume there is something good in every child; the critics go from this to assume there is something good in every book written for a child. It is not a sound theory.”
—Katharine S. White (1892–1977)
“I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding—joining with their greatest enemies in bestowing the harshest epithets on such works, and scarcely ever permitting them to be read by their own heroine, who, if she accidentally take up a novel, is sure to turn over its insipid leaves with disgust.”
—Jane Austen (1775–1817)