On 12/09/2007, Ray Saintonge <saintonge(a)telus.net> wrote:
Typically, sellers of new books will only show the
ISBNs of current
editions. Books that have a new edition each year will have a long
range of ISBNs and will distinguish hard and soft cover, or even whether
there are thumb tabs in the fore edge. I very much agree with the
usefulness of a reference work that would sort out the different editions.
Of course, for the average English-language work, you have the US
edition, and the UK edition, and possibly an Australian or Canadian
edition... and hard and softcover in both... and people have started
giving ISBNs to some reprintings, or work on a "new cover art, new
ISBN" model... or have the "anniversary edition" with identical text
but new blurb be a new edition...
...it's insane.
There do exist such reference services for crosslinking. They're
patchy, they're sometimes available and sometimes not, and they're
going to be subjective* and incomplete for the forseeable future. I
would *love* to see what Open Library can do with this, or suggestions
for how we can help**.
--
- Andrew Gray
andrew.gray(a)dunelm.org.uk
* Yes, subjective. Boundaries are fuzzy. Great Expectations with two
different editors is the same work. Is 20,000 Leagues with two
different editor-cum-translators the same work?
** One of the best ways we can help is to do the spadework. Writing an
article about a book? Do the research and give us a comprehensive
history of its editions, with publications dates and annotations and
ISBNs where they exist. Our article is better, and we have the raw
material to feed an ISBN resolver in the future.