User:Andrew Gray/ISBN
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a ten- or thirteen-character code used as an identifier for commercially published books. Originally produced in the late 1960s for the British publishing industry as the nine-digit Standard Book Number, the system became widespread as the ten-digit ISBN in the 1970s and 1980s, and is today one of the most widely used standard identifiers for books worldwide. From 2005, the standard was extended to thirteen characters (ISBN-13), with the older system defined as ISBN-10; the migration concluded in 2007, and all currently issued ISBNs are thirteen characters long. The two systems are directly convertible - each ISBN-10 has a corresponding ISBN-13, and vice versa - and many books published during the transitional period carry both.
ISBNs are theoretically unique to specific editions of books, but this principle is not always adhered to; some are reused for subsequent editions, while others are accidentally assigned twice by publishers. Different bindings of the same edition (eg, hardcover vs. paperback) are normally given separate ISBNs, and an edition jointly produced by multiple publishers may be issued ISBNs by each of them.
Similar standard codes include the International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), for periodicals, and [[International Standard Music Number[]] (ISMN), for printed scores.