A Citizen of Bookland
UPC codes have 12 digits. But if you look at the back of a recent book you didn’t buy at the drugstore, you’ll see a 13-digit barcode. Books don’t use a UPC (well, unless they do); they use the EAN, the European Article Number. EAN’s begin with a country code.
But all books’ EAN’s begin 978. It’s a special country-code defined for books.
Bookland. Where all books come from.
It must be the happiest place on Earth!
Oh! That would be so great! Humans could never live there, though, just visit.
Posted by Sumana on December 8 2004 06:25
The remaining 10 digits after 978 are the ISBN of the book. However, the last digit is a check digit, and since the 978 is part of the bar code, and because bar codes use a different check digit scheme, this check digit is different from the check digit of the ISBN.
The bar code also often has a 5 digit extension. If this extension is 90000, it indicates that the price is not encoded. If is any other five digits, it indicates the list price of the book. e.g.
51095 indicates the list price is US $ 10.95. Here the first five indicates a price in US dollars and the 1095 is $10.95.
If you have a bar code scanner, you can use this information to help index your library. I've done this for my library of books at work (over 1200 books.)
The only problem with this wonderful scheme is that many mass market paperbacks are sold in grocery stores, where the 12 digit UPC code is standard instead of the 13 digit EAN style bar code. It's not possible to get an ISBN out of the UPC code. In theory, if a book has the UPC code on the back, it should have the EAN bar code on the inside front cover.
Posted by Brian on December 10 2004 16:12