RE: FW: Revision of ISBN / Révision du ISBN

Hi Dan, 

Here's the info I got from my contact here at LAC in Bibliographic
Standards.  

"The current ISBN Users' Manual 

http://www.isbn-international.org/download/ISBNmanual.pdf 

talks about the application of the ISBN in section 5.  The Users' Manual
will be updated to reflect the change in format of the number but the
application guidelines should remain the same."

My comment:  The manual says quite distinctly in 5.13 that "ISBN can never
be reused".  Unfortunately, as Ralph had noted, it's obvious that some
publishers don't read the manual that carefully...

Barb
______________________
Barbara Shuh
Library Network Specialist
Library and Archives Canada 
395 Wellington Street Ottawa ON K1A 0N4
Phone:  (613) 995-1701 | Fax:  (613) 943-1939
E-mail:  barbara.shuh@nlc-bnc.ca 
-----Original Message-----
From: Dan Brickley [mailto:danbri@w3.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 10:48 AM
To: Shuh Barbara
Cc: IPIG List (E-mail); ZIG List (E-mail); 'ncip@tlcdelivers.com'
Subject: Re: FW: Revision of ISBN / Révision du ISBN



* Shuh Barbara <barbara.shuh@nlc-bnc.ca> [2004-03-04 10:06-0500]
> FYI
> I'm passing on this background information to give protocol implementors a
> heads-up on introduction of 13-digit ISBN, in case it has an impact on
your
> applications.

Thanks for this. I wonder if I could take this opportunity to ask
whether the situation regarding ISBN-recycling could be clarified,
perhaps by stating explicitly that 13-digit ISBNs can only ever 
denote a single work (ie. declare re-use to be an error per the new spec).

(This question has come up a few times in the context of RDF data merging 
of descriptions of ISBN-identified material. Implementors have been
unsure as to whether it is reasonable to merge descriptions when they
see they same URI, since it is said  that ISBNs have on frequent
occasion been re-assigned/re-cycles).

Thanks for any advice,

Dan

Received on Thursday, 4 March 2004 15:11:11 UTC