International standard book number is a group of 13 numbers identifying a book and its publisher. International standard book numbers, which are also called ISBN’s, simplify book ordering processes. Booksellers, librarians, and others who handle many books can send and receive orders faster and more efficiently, using ISBN’s.
An ISBN has five parts, separated by hyphens or spaces. The first group of numbers is either 978 or 979. These numbers are the prefixes reserved for books by GS1, an organization that manages an international system for identifying products (see Bar coding). The second group of numbers identifies the geographical or language group of a book. For example, 0 and 1 are group identifier codes for the English language. The third group of numbers represents the publisher of a book. The fourth group represents the title of a book. The last number is a check digit. As the ISBN goes through a computer, the check digit indicates errors that may have been made when the number was handwritten.
The standard book number system was first used in the United Kingdom in 1967. In 1970, the International Organization for Standardization officially approved ISBN’s. Most ISBN’s consisted of 10 numbers until 2007, when the current 13-number format was adopted.
