Subject: Re: [urn] ISBNs and pagination

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 09 Sep 2014 15:35:22 -0400

--On Tuesday, September 09, 2014 15:17 -0400 "Dale R. Worley"
<[email-masked]> wrote:

>> From: "John Levine" <[email-masked]>
>> 
>> In article
>> <[email-masked]> you write:
>> > So I tried to determine whether changing the pagination of
>> > a book (without changing the sequence of the words)
>> > requires changing the ISBN.  The ISBN Users' Manual doesn't
>> > make that clear.
>> 
>> I'm not surprised.  ISBNs were designed for paper books, and
>> are assigned to e-books sort of by accident.  Their original
>> and still primary use is for inventory management at
>> booksellers.
>> 
>> A way to think about whether two versions of a book need
>> different ISBNs, is to ask if a reasonable person ordered one
>> and got the other, would she believe that she got what she
>> ordered.  A rough analogy here might be trade and mass market
>> paperbacks, which have the same text, but are paginated and
>> typeset differently.  They invariably have different ISBNs.
> 
> An interesting point.  For a buyer that is a scholarly user,
> then two volumes of a modern work, with exactly the same text
> but different pagination, would be "different editions",
> because the same passage would have to be cited differently in
> each edition.
> 
> (However, classical works usually have a canonical line
> numbering or some such by which citations are done, and so the
> pagination of the classical text into a modern edition is not
> critical for a scholarly user.)

Two additional comments; Juha or others closer to the actual
library and publisher community should check me on both:

(1) While it has become popular in some quarters to include an
ISBN in a citation, they are rarely considered a normative part
of the citation.  In order words, enough information about
editions, etc., are expected to be in the citation to make any
details like page and section numbers that are used accurate.
So discussions about the relationship between ISBNs and page
numbers may or may not be relevant.  That is one of several
reasons why a fragment that uses a page number may not be as
stable as the ISBN itself.

(2) The International ISBN Agency (aka the ISO 2108 [ISBN]
Registration Authority) ultimately uses the same branch of the
international Protocol Police that the IETF (and IANA) do.  In
part because, as John L. points out, ISBN are often used by
booksellers for inventory and sales management, publishers have
a lot of incentive to assign different numbers to versions of a
book that are likely to end up with different prices.   But,
even if the rules were clear that a hardbound edition was to be
assigned a different number than a paperback, that decision is
ultimately in the hands of the publisher.  Not all publishers do
things the same way and, if one were to actually violate the
standard in how an assignment is made, well, the International
or some national ISBN agency could get in line behind us for the
attentions of the Protocol Police.  Otherwise, their authority
basically has the same limits as ours: to try to persuade the
offender that whatever they are doing is a bad idea and one that
will ultimately hurt them as well as others.

Sadly, none of the cases suggested above are entirely
theoretical.   And the Protocol Police remain somewhat elusive
and, at best, ineffective as a remedy.

    john

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Wed, 10 Sep 2014 15:52:25 -0400

> From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>

> But, even if the rules were clear that a hardbound edition was to be
> assigned a different number than a paperback,

Indeed, the rules are clear on that point:

    https://www.isbn-international.org/content/isbn-assignment
    "ISBN assignment"

    When to keep the same ISBN 

	 A reprint

	 The original ISBN must be retained, provided the publisher
	 remains the same and there are no changes to text or binding.

> Not all publishers do things the same way and, if one were to
> actually violate the standard in how an assignment is made, well,
> the International or some national ISBN agency could get in line
> behind us for the attentions of the Protocol Police.  Otherwise,
> their authority basically has the same limits as ours: to try to
> persuade the offender that whatever they are doing is a bad idea and
> one that will ultimately hurt them as well as others.

That's true, but it's another instance of "If you don't follow the
rules when using these constructs, you will get poor results."  It's
parallel to the case where if someone *uses* a URN for different
meanings at different times (and for OID-based URNs in one's own OID
tree, that's quite easy to do), then every element that touches the
URN may misbehave (because the element may assume that the meaning of
the URN is fixed over time).

Dale

---

From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:28:30 +0900

> 	 remains the same and there are no changes to text or binding.

Hello Dale,

What you cite only says "use the same ISBN if there are no changes to 
binding". What we would need, to have a rule that requires that a 
hardbound edition needs a different number than a paperback, is 
something that says "use a different ISBN if there are changes to binding".

Logically, these two are related, but not the same.

Regards,   Martin.

---

From: John C Klensin <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 05:27:19 -0400

--On Friday, September 12, 2014 15:28 +0900 "\"Martin J.
Dürst\"" <[email-masked]> wrote:

> What you cite only says "use the same ISBN if there are no
> changes to binding". What we would need, to have a rule that
> requires that a hardbound edition needs a different number
> than a paperback, is something that says "use a different ISBN
> if there are changes to binding".
> 

Indeed.  And this is one of several properties of the ISO
standard that allow a great deal of publisher discretion.  My
personal sense is that the distinction is a necessary one.
Rather than comparing paperback with hardcover books, assume
that, through the print run of a volume, the publisher switched
the color of the cloth used in the hardcover binding.  If they
were concerned about ISBNs for inventory control, they would
certainly want to change the ISBN if one of those was a "deluxe"
or "special edition" cover that was to be sold at a different
price.  If it was merely the fact that there was a shortage of
blue one week so they shifted to grey, with no other change,
they might not.  Trying to overspecify that sort of thing and
list all of the cases in a standard just leads to rat
hole-creation and more edge cases.

best,
   john

---

From: [email-masked] (Dale R. Worley)
Date: Fri, 12 Sep 2014 15:30:48 -0400

> From: "Martin J. Dürst" <[email-masked]>

> Logically, these two are related, but not the same.

That's true...  What I should have quoted is this other text on the
page, which is more or less the converse of what I did quote:

> When to assign a new ISBN 
>
> A change of format
> 
> Different formats need different ISBNs in order, for example, that a
> customer who wants to buy a book in hardback rather than paperback
> can be confident that they will receive the correct format.

Dale