How to late an ISBN of a book page

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How to late an ISBN of a book page

1ckq37ive
Abr 25, 2023, 5:28 pm

Maybe I'm just missing something obvious, but here's a problem I've noticed. On the main page for any given work, the ISBN row will either read: no ISBN, or # ISBN 's associated.
But nowhere can you find the actual ISBN number/numbers of the work. I'd really appreciate help; thanks in advance.

2MarthaJeanne
Abr 25, 2023, 5:30 pm

Go to the editions page, and you will see the ISBNs listed for each edition.

3r.orrison
Abr 25, 2023, 6:17 pm

Note that often they are wrong, for various reasons. The data in LibraryThing comes from users, sometimes from library or Amazon sources, sometimes from manual entry. A user can select a book with one ISBN, then edit their title and author to be a different book. (For example, adding the first book of a series then just editing the title to be the second book of a series.) Sometimes publishers re-use ISBNs. Sometimes sources have incorrect ISBNs.

If you're expecting LibraryThing to have "the actual ISBN number/numbers of the work" you're going to be disappointed.

4ckq37ive
Abr 25, 2023, 7:12 pm

>3 r.orrison: Yeah, Okay. That answers the question.
It just seemed to me that if a book was associated with (say) 5 ISBN numbers, they ought to be displayed (just like the LC Classifications are.
Here is an example.
https://www.librarything.com/work/763330/workdetails/239536472
Is there any hope of implementing this? It seems SO basic, that's all, and the absence of it seems so glaring.
>2 MarthaJeanne: No, that's not true. Only about 1 time out of 4 are they there.

5bokai
Editado: Abr 25, 2023, 7:51 pm

The problem is that ISBNs are edition/book specific, not work specific. The work you listed for example was first published before ISBNs existed, so the reason that many of the editions do not have ISBNs is probably because there was no ISBN registered.

Listing out the ISBNs instead of just saying that there are 5 might save you a click so that's an understandable request. They may not do this because for popular books there can be 100s of ISBNs through. Ulysses has 543!

6r.orrison
Editado: Abr 26, 2023, 2:02 am

>2 MarthaJeanne: Go to the editions page, and you will see the ISBNs listed for each edition.
>4 ckq37ive: No, that's not true. Only about 1 time out of 4 are they there.

Yes, that is where you'll see the list of ISBNs. If there isn't an ISBN listed on a line, then that indicates a book was added by a user without an ISBN - either from a source that didn't have the ISBN (perhaps because as bokai says the book pre-dated ISBNs, or maybe the source's data was just incomplete), or manually added without entering the ISBN, or they conscientiously deleted the ISBN from their book entry because it was not right for their copy. The list on the Editions page is the best you're going to get.

7MarthaJeanne
Abr 26, 2023, 2:22 am

>4 ckq37ive: Where else do you think LT would get ISBNs? The ISBNs that LT knows about are there. As >3 r.orrison: says, you also cannot depend on all of them being accurate.

8gilroy
Abr 26, 2023, 5:50 am

You can go to the Book Detail page for the Most Common ISBN, however, that doesn't mean it will be THE ISBN.

Realize that for each language, you could potentially have at minimum, 4 ISBNS: Hardback printing, Paperback printing, ebook, and Audio. Some will even add on a 5th: Library binding.

And this assumes one publisher, one print run. Change publishers, and you are going to potentially get 4 New ISBNs.
Then there's the problem with books published before ISBNs existed, as was also covered above.

9MarthaJeanne
Editado: Abr 26, 2023, 6:53 am

>8 gilroy: Book detail will only be there if you are looking at a specific copy - usually your own - and it will show you the ISBN of that particular copy.

And it's not just language, USA, UK are usually different (Also of course different publishers) and you can get Canada and Australia in there, too, as well as other countries.

If they were to list any ISBNs on the work detail page, it would have to be just the top few. Would you find that useful? Even The Promise from 2021 has 31.

10lilithcat
Abr 26, 2023, 8:40 am

>8 gilroy:

Then there's the problem with books published before ISBNs existed,

There are books published since the advent of ISBNs that don't have them. Many small presses, artists books, etc. don't have them.

11MarthaJeanne
Abr 26, 2023, 8:54 am

>10 lilithcat: A lot of books published by Amazon don't have them.

12rosalita
Abr 26, 2023, 9:23 am

>11 MarthaJeanne: And ebooks that are added from Amazon.com by searching on the ISBN do not retain the ISBN in the book record when they are added to your library, which is a lingering annoyance for me and one more reason not to use Amazon as a source except when I can't find an ebook anywhere else.

13Keeline
Abr 26, 2023, 10:48 am

Older books that were reprinted (after 1966) by mainstream publishers had ISBNs assigned to them for inventory control at the publisher level. Of course, just because an ISBN is assigned does not mean the the publisher printed it in/on the book. During certain periods mass-market paperbacks may have a barcode that is for store systems (UPC) as opposed to the ISBN-13 used today. The latter start with 978 today but that could change as those numbers are exhausted.

A side effect of using the ISBN for inventory control is that there is usually a distinct one for each major edition from a publisher as noted. Though it depends on the publisher, you could have four, five, or more ISBNs from a single publisher in a given country and language.

Since LT gathers works together through combining processes (automatic or manual), this can cause some confusion when looking for a specific edition.

Some U.S. books also have an LCCN which was used when ordering paper cards for card catalog drawers from the Library of Congress. These can go back to 1900 or so but only library-oriented publishers tended to print them on the copyright page to help the librarians in accessioning a title. Grosset & Dunlap was not a library-oriented publisher — rather the professional librarians usually didn't care to carry their books — but they did try to help the process along by printing both LCCN and ISBN in books of a certain era.



Generally the first two digits of an LCCN will be the year when it was issued or at least the series in which it was cataloged. The rest of the number (1 to 6 digits) was a sequential number for cataloging. This can be a hint to show if two 1954 books were issued months apart if the numbers are far different.

One can reliably look up book records with the LCCN from the Library of Congress as a data source. Of course their system isn't always working. Sometimes OverCat will also include LoC imports from other members and maybe other library sources which may also store the LCCN.

Having a 10-digit keypad available is helpful for entering ISBNs and LCCNs manually when there is no barcode to scan.

Modern books from very small publishers, even self-published, may not have an ISBN assigned or printed on them. There is an expense for this and if you are only going to sell 50 or fewer copies, it may not be worth it. Amazon has its own ASIN and these are another way to look up book data if Amazon is the data source. Kindle books may only have an ASIN for example.

The above is assuming that you are trying to catalog books. It wasn't clear from this post's subject line and the previous posts exactly what is being asked. Even if this is a little off-topic, I hope it is interesting to someone.

James

14MarthaJeanne
Editado: Abr 26, 2023, 11:54 am

>12 rosalita: Not just e-books. I try to remember to copy the ISBN if I have to use Amazon.

Note: it is always worth checking that the ISBN from the source is the same one you searched on.

15Nicole_VanK
Abr 26, 2023, 11:57 am

And then there's the problem that same ISBNs sometimes got used for very different books. It's not a very reliable system.

16rosalita
Abr 26, 2023, 2:18 pm

>14 MarthaJeanne: I didn't realize they did the same thing for paper books as well — it's quite annoying but like you I try to remember to copy the ISBN from the Add Books search box before I add the book to my catalog.

Re your second comment, I have found occasions where I have searched for the ISBN of the ebook version and the book that comes up says it's an ebook but the ISBN in the record is for the paper book. It's tricky to try to remember all the things you need to double-check, but I'd rather have the records be accurate than quick to enter so I don't really mind much.

17AnnieMod
Abr 26, 2023, 2:20 pm

>16 rosalita: Amazon removed all ISBNs from their ebook records a few years ago but retained the connection into their versions of work. So if you search for an ebook ISBN it will find it - but it will not open the ebook version necessarily - it will usually serve whatever version Amazon thinks is the "main" one. So even if I have the eISBN, I don't use it when adding from Amazon...

18rosalita
Editado: Abr 26, 2023, 2:25 pm

>17 AnnieMod: I use the ebook ISBN to search all sources (when I have it), but confirm that the record is listed as an ebook before adding it to my catalog. But the books where I've seen the ebook ISBN on a paper copy were all from libraries, who should know better.

19AnnieMod
Abr 26, 2023, 2:26 pm

>18 rosalita: Yeah, they should but sometimes they add it so that people can find the book I guess... I can see the reasoning if whatever software they use does not allow the linking of different formats in some way...