Author, Date, ISBN?

November 9, 2009 4:40 AM

A question for those who know far more than I do about citation formats: why do none of them include ISBN numbers?

So, in working on a large project, and fighting with EndNote the entire time, I found the fastest way to keep track of books, especially when using multiple editions, was to reference them by ISBN-10 (13 works well too, but 10 seemed easier) numbers. EndNote's database will record these, happily, for all works that take them.

But then I got to thinking (rather than writing, like I should have been) - why do no modern citation formats use ISBN for referencing texts that have them? I understand they wouldn't be useful for items without ISBN numbers, but those require different citation formats anyway. Why not exclude publisher, city, and year, in favor of an ISBN? Or along side one?

So, I suppose what I am asking is the following: why ISBN's are not used as a reference point for citation in modern citation formats?

posted by strixus to education (19 answers total)

1. ISBN numbers are not unique. This is why Amazon uses their own unique ID and not an ISBN number in their URL string.

2. Books that pre-date the ISBN system have no ISBN number, therefore would be impossible to cite using such a system as you'd like.

3. Citations are intended to provide meta-type information to the reader. Omitting publisher, city, and year from the citation removes context that a reader might need or want.
posted by camworld at 4:45 AM on November 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

wait, ISBNs are not unique? explain please...
posted by nangua at 4:59 AM on November 9, 2009 [2 favorites]

I am aware of the pre ISBN issues - However, we run into the same problem using publisher and city.
posted by strixus at 5:02 AM on November 9, 2009

And camworld, why not simply provide ISBN along side publisher and city and year?
posted by strixus at 5:03 AM on November 9, 2009

I reckon it is because of structural inertia, tradition is a powerful inhibitor for change.

As far as I know ISBNs are intended to be unique, but there has been the occasional screw up where two different books shared one ISBN. In other words, a human error problem rather than anything wrong with the identifier itself.
posted by knapah at 5:07 AM on November 9, 2009

Can you imagine proofreading a 1000-entry bibliography full of ISBNs?
posted by philokalia at 5:13 AM on November 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

ISBN numbers are *not* unique. This is a commonly-known issue among book resellers. When I was working at Borders.com 10 years ago it was explained to me that ISBN numbers are not unique because not all publishers follow the same rules and there have been cases where a publisher will simply make up an ISBN number or omit it all together. With the increasing number of independent and small-time publishers this is likely to be a much bigger issue today that it was 10 years ago.

That said, an ISBN is *nearly* unique. The number of duplicates is small. If a book publisher receives their ISBN from the U.S. ISBN Agency then it is unique from that perspective.
posted by camworld at 5:25 AM on November 9, 2009

Aren't ISBNs different for each format of the item, like hardcover, paperback, audio?
posted by SuperSquirrel at 5:26 AM on November 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Exactly: a single work can have multiple ISBNs, especially if it's been printed in several formats (hardcover, trade paperback, mass-market paperback) or over a long period of time (e.g., first published by one publisher, then the rights revert to the author, who sells it to another publisher, who puts out a new edition).

More to the point: an ISBN is a sales identifier, not a work identifier -- the book equivalent of a SKU. One could just as easily ask why not put a Library of Congress catalogue number in the bibliography. The answer is: because it isn't all that helpful for someone trying to track down a copy of the book. (And not every book is in the LoC system -- sound familiar?)
posted by mcwetboy at 5:38 AM on November 9, 2009 [3 favorites]

How about using OCLC WorldCat? That adds OCLC Control Numbers to its records and I found the citation output feature invaluable for my Masters.
posted by KMH at 6:09 AM on November 9, 2009

Not quite what you asked, but Ottobib could be useful for you. It makes up bibliographies from ISBNs.
posted by kg at 6:12 AM on November 9, 2009

ISBNs are also commonly reused after a certain period of time. The time period will be longer now that ISBN-13 is being used more frequently, but it will still happen.

I think it's a great idea to include them in citations, but I don't know how you'd go about getting that to happen.
posted by peanut_mcgillicuty at 6:17 AM on November 9, 2009

The ISO 690 citation format does include ISBNs, or ISSNs for serials.
posted by grouse at 6:24 AM on November 9, 2009

Depending on how the rights for the book were handled, the same title may have different ISBNs in different countries. I've seen books where the same edition of the text had four different ISBNs because different regions had different rights holders.
posted by Lentrohamsanin at 6:31 AM on November 9, 2009

Some of the issues you all are pointing out are actually, in my book, positives of ISBNs. If I am using one edition of the book (hard back, 3rd ed) and you own another edition (paper trade, published in the UK, 2nd ed), it would be far more obvious that I am using a different version of the book than you by referencing ISBN. Ditto if I happen to be using three different versions of the same text in a work - if I cite 2nd ed for one thing, and 4th for another, it would be far more convenient to reference the ISBN.

How frequent are ISBN reuses? I've yet to encounter a case of looking up a text by ISBN that brings up the wrong text, especially using ISBN 13.

None of these have really yet answered the question though, other than offering issues with ISBN that may or may not be real problems, and the duplication question, which needs clarification - Why not include the ISBN of a text in a citation format? Or if one does exist, such as the ISO 690, why isn't it used in the more common citation formats?
posted by strixus at 7:09 AM on November 9, 2009

When I was working in library acquisitions, it drove me mad how frequently Israeli book publishers would reuse ISBN numbers. Since there's no check to their misuse, ISBN numbers are just not adequate to serve as unique identifiers for sources.

Also, if you're struggling with EndNote, you should take a look at the newest beta version of Zotero. Since it's browser integrated, getting citations into your database is a cinch. And the newest version has cloud storage of your cits, so you can work across multiple computers. I imported my EndNote library for my dissertation a few months ago and haven't looked back. Zotero has a field for ISSN/ISBN that might be helpful for what you're trying to do here. I'm not sure how you can force it to import that data automatically, though.
posted by felix betachat at 7:24 AM on November 9, 2009 [1 favorite]

Why not include the ISBN of a text in a citation format?

I guess I'm not sure what the point would be for most people. You seem to have some reasons for keeping different editions distinct, but for many uses of a bibliography I think one would prefer the opposite. I can see that it might be useful if you're citing a lot of textbooks or very old works, but practically none of the books I cite have multiple editions that are truly distinct, or anything that would lead an ISBN being useful. Not to mention that bibliography formats *do* have a slot for edition, presenting the same information in a way that is human readable.
posted by advil at 8:36 AM on November 9, 2009

I would suggest that a relatively long numeric string would be subject to a lot of errors in transcription. Then again, the citiation formats that incorporate DOI aren't afraid of that issue, and it should be less salient with the increasing dominance of copy/paste digital production of bibliographic information as opposed to writing or typing copies.
posted by onshi at 9:37 AM on November 9, 2009

Citations are not just used for people to find the item in questions, but they are also a huge part of determining the standing of your faculty and post-docs at a university. Various databases keep track of these citation numbers for authors (Scopus, ISI, etc.), and when a work is miss-cited, they create another record, splintering the author's statistics. In trying to find citation numbers for various professors here, I am constantly coming across wrong years, volumes, editions and pages which splinter their true statistics. It's frustrating, and I can't imagine how much worse it would be if you added yet another set of numbers, particularly one that is fairly random. I would have to assume that's the reason. DOI hasn't caused this problem yet because it is not an identifying characteristic like an ISBN.

Also, various organizations have their own citation rules, so someday maybe someone will include this information, when they feel it can be used without causing a problem.
posted by itsonreserve at 11:05 AM on November 9, 2009