> > >And unless an atom:feed's ID changes whenever the contents of its > atom:head changes (as I believe a books ISBN would change if a new edition > were released, right?), New editions often have new ISBNs. But not always.
> > This is just hearsay from some of the URN debates, but as far as I > understand, ISBNs get reused, sometimes for new editions, and sometimes > for totally different books (assuming the old one is out of print). Yes, that is true. > Allocation is up to the publisher, and what an edition is is also > more or less up to the publishers (there are things such as > major and minor editions, printings, and so on). > I'm sure there are some people on this list who know better. > Yep. Sometimes an ISBN is used by a publisher for a pre-release of a book that isn't actually published & the ISBN is re-used. This causes all kinds of havoc at Amazon, but we've got tools & systems that validate/verify & attempt to double check this sort of issue. Similar problems happen with UPCs. For example, many toys have different models yet use the same UPC (Rescue Heroes is an example). This causes problems when a warehouse receives an item, scans the UPC & has several choices - the pink Barbie or the purple Barbie... If you really want to know more details on ISBN I can ask around & get more specifics.
