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From: wmartin@brl-tgr.ARPA (Will Martin )
Newsgroups: net.books
Subject: ISBN Numbers - interpretation?
Message-ID: <5236@brl-tgr.ARPA>
Date: Fri, 12-Oct-84 11:49:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: brl-tgr.5236
Posted: Fri Oct 12 11:49:30 1984
Date-Received: Sat, 13-Oct-84 08:48:43 EDT
Organization: Ballistics Research Lab
Lines: 18

Does anyone know if the ISBN numbers assigned to books have some
coded meaning or interpretation, other than something trivial like
"publisher" and "sequence number" or something equally boring?

I'm guessing that, in a number like "0-89141-161-5", the "89141"
refers to the publisher (because, in the publisher's book catalog
in front of me that I am using for an example, all the books have
that number). But would the "161" just mean "the 161th book issued
by publisher #89141"? And what about the preceeding "0" and trailing "5"?

I was hoping to find some sort of coding that would define types of
books, like "all cookbooks have a number ending in 3" or something like that.

Curious, 

Will Martin

seismo!brl-bmd!wmartin    or     wmartin@almsa-1.ARPA