Richard Holton wrote:
On 9/3/06, Andrew Gray shimgray@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/09/06, David Gerard dgerard@gmail.com wrote:
On 03/09/06, Ray Saintonge saintonge@telus.net wrote:
I have never been keen on ISBNs either. In addition to older works that
never had an ISBN in the first place, works with a long history of different editions can have any number of ISBNs, and at some point it would be helpful to be able to compare various editions.
Yes. ISBNs are useful indeed, but they were created for the use of the publishing industry and are per *edition* rather than per *book*.
Strictly, it's not even "per edition" - it's a sort of odd fusion of edition and production run. (Trade paperback and hardcover "editions" will often be textually identical editions - printed from the same plates, so the text and layout is identical - but just bound and marketed differently)
But isn't the edition of the book crucial in a bibliographic entry? Page numbers can change between editions, not to mention actual content.
Yes and no. The original citer works with what he has; the Wikipedian who undertakes to verify the source has another edition with a different ISBN, or the one may have the hardbound and the other a softbound edition with a different ISBN, or the ISBNs may differ because one is the American and the other is the British printing. It's not a simple problem.
With Wikipedia we can trace the evolution of a text, but that is not so easy with paper books.
Ec