The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) system was developed out of the Standard Book Number system introduced in the UK in 1967 and is based on the International Standard ISO 2108. The ISBN is a short, machine‐readable code that identifies, unambiguously, any book published from every other title or edition. It facilitates ordering, acquisition, cataloguing, stock control, accounting and circulation procedures in libraries and the book trade. It can be converted to an EAN (European Article Number).
ISBNs are now so familiar that we take them for granted, but I found the prefatory matter a useful reminder of the mechanics of the ISBN and how to use them. The ISBN must appear on the verso of the title page and at the foot of the outside of the back cover. It can appear – and this has often puzzled me – either with spaces or a hyphen between the four elements of the number, viz, the group number identifying country, area or language group; publisher prefix; title number; and check digit. Included in the prefatory matter is a listing of the 146 Group Numbers, from 0 through to 99946 (the latter number for Nepal, the latest country to join the ISBN community); an alphabetical arrangement of Group/Country and contact details for all of them (Stella Griffiths of Midas House, Woking is the UK contact, and Boris Lenski in Moscow for Uzbekistan); a list of Country Codes from AD (Andorra) to ZW (Zimbabwe) used in volume three; and an alphabetical listing of the countries that feature in the first two volumes of the Directory.
Be warned, this reference work is massive! It covers 674,234 publishers from 221 countries and territories (an increase of 7.2 per cent from the previous edition). The numerical section that fills Volume 3 lists 721,049 ISBNs including publishers no longer active. The mass of detail is accommodated by using small type in a four‐column layout on an A4‐sized page (near enough) of thin paper with minimal details. Entries give name of publisher (A to Z within country), brief address, phone, e‐mail (where there is one), and, of course, the ISBN number. All 200 entries, plus cross‐references, for Albania fit onto just one page. The UK covers some 79,000 publishers in 346 pages, and the USA, over 170,000 in 848 pages.
The massive administrative feat in compiling this directory is impressive, the filing rules alone are a work of art, but who I wonder, would want a book like this? ISBN queries do crop up from time to time, but they can generally be resolved by contacting the publisher, other trade sources, or even Stella and Boris and their ilk, whose offices should feature in more general directories or found via search engines. (A CD‐Rom is available, but not, it seems, internet access.) As the Hon. Publications Secretary of the J.B. Priestley Society I had feelings of guilt on noticing that my old place of work was still noted as the publisher's address. Better let Stella know my new address! Though defunct publishers remain “on file” – this is a documentary source for ISBNs, not publishers. Interestingly, there are 20,950 publishers without ISBNs in the USA. A final surprise was that there was no mention of the planned changes to UK ISBNs; maybe the news came too late, or was deemed “out of scope”.
