Re: As an aside, a possibly interesting read....

Bowker was an ISTC registration agency until recently. We pulled out because
of the lack of support in the US, and refer the few curious to Nielsen.

From:  Graham Bell <graham@editeur.org>
Date:  Tuesday, September 23, 2014 at 2:09 PM
To:  Phil Madans <Phil.Madans@hbgusa.com>, Laura Dawson
<ljndawson@gmail.com>, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>, Ivan
Herman <ivan@w3.org>, W3C Public Digital Publishing IG Mailing List
<public-digipub-ig-comment@w3.org>
Subject:  Re: As an aside, a possibly interesting read....

What Phil and Laura have written certainly summarises -- and illustrates --
the debate over identifiers.

But the text below (from Phil) is a little misleading.

> Whether an ISTC
> is a real work Identifier or not is a matter of debate. I disagree that ii
> is. It is actually an attribute of the ISBN―-hat is how they are assigned.
> Different ISBNs of the same master content might have different ISTC’s.
> Translations for instance.

The 'rules' of the ISTC say that translations are by definition different
works, and MUST have different ISTCs (though those ISTCs will be related to
each other -- one is a 'derived work', and this close relationship is
recorded in the registration metadata for the ISTCs themselves). This
contrasts with library practice, where 'work' is something at a higher level
and two translations are actually termed two 'expressions' of the same
'work'. In library terms, the ISTC is an expression identifier. See the
attached PDF (a slide from a training session that I deliver fairly
regularly) for a summary of how the <indecs> model on which ISTC and ONIX
are based compares with the FRBR library model. There is -- as far as I know
-- no public identifier that works at the FRBR:work level, though libraries
may have internal IDs.

And I'm pretty sure ISTCs can be assigned without an ISBN (and without any
product ID at all, in fact) -- they are not (strictly) an attribute of the
ISBN, though they may be presented as such in various systems. They can be
registered based on a manuscript, prior to there being a product.

On the other hand, there's no doubt that ISTC has so far proved unpopular
among publishers, for some of the reasons Laura and Phil list, and its
actual usage is minimal.


Graham





Graham Bell
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