Musings of a West Texas Business Venture

ISBN Update

After my previous post on ISBN's (via Seth), I had one of my high-school interns do some digging as to the relevance of Seth's claims, and the feasibility of someone actually attempting to go out and "challenge" the system. I'm not claiming it will be easy.

A fast poll of a few "younglings" shows that they all are well aware of many of the free (and pay) tools online, who seem to be targeting them, but missing the boat. A quick Google shows eazypaper.com, noodletools.com, and easybib.com, among others.

Probably half, or more, of the bibliography touting users in the US are middle-school and high-school students. None of those students likely have a debit or a credit card. So, I would postulate that most of the above companies missed the boat.

Someone else mentioned that libraryThing.com did everything you needed for a bibliography, which isn't quite the case. However, it certainly appears to be a poster boy for the Web 2.0 application.

Which brings us to ISBN databases. There is no such thing as a singular ISBN database. Doesn't exist. And those that claim to be such things, are incorrect, and behind. Here's why:

1. A publisher applies for an ISBN "range", similar to IP ranges, from isbn.org.
2. The publisher (if approved) is given an ISBN range, to do with as they please.
3. The publisher develops and publishes a book. On the way out the door, it gets an ISBN.
4. A library, or Amazon, or buy.com, or someone else, gets a copy of the book, and the ISBN.
5. The entity from step (4) updates the MARC record at their library (assuming the entity was a library). This can be fetched using the Z39.50 protocol, or XML, for those who are up to speed.
   
6. Someone (most likely the library of congress) will snatch up the ISBN code, as well as the other information from the MARC record (title, author, etc...).
7. Now that the ISBN is public record, and available via your local library, it will be added to any of the online ISBN databases.

The problem, of course, is that steps 4 - 8 can take a long time. More than twelve months. So, someone seeking to advance this incomprehensible mess would need to speed those steps up to ensure that the poor student is able to kick out their bibliography in time.

Now, I'm sure Seth would love someone to come along and completely toss out (or revolutionize) the bibliography. It truly is busy work at the extreme end of the spectrum. Although it could be technically done for the paper-bound book (ISBN searches are available for the vast majority of books), how exactly does one handle the growing list of web pages, magazines, online books, audio books (audibles.com), blogs, podcasts, and all of the other sources someone might need to cite?

posted by Anthony Presley @ 6:18 PM