The Universal Standard Book Number (USBN): why, how and a progress report

Outlines the reasons why the International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is proving to be an unreliable identifier for records in bibliographic data banks and suggests how the Universal Standard Book Number (USBN) could be used as an effective substitute. Results are given of an analysis of the 4% duplicate rate found by Beale and Lynch, together with the details of the work in progress at the University of Bradford.