On 3/13/2013 9:24 AM, Karen Coyle wrote: > Others have answered, but I want to go a bit further into the library > cataloging that produced these "anomalies", and suggest some possibly > more sensible approaches. > > On 3/13/13 2:57 AM, kltrg wrote: > >> >> 1. Are ISBNs integers or do I use the - signs as they are used in the >> books themselves? > > ISBNs from the library data should not contain the hyphens, but may be > either ISBN-10 or ISBN-13. It is useful to keep in mind that the first > library data was created in machine-readable form in the late 1960's, so > often the data itself precedes such things as ISBN-13, and usually does > not get upgraded. Since most sources that we would link to can accept > either ISBN form (-10 or -13) it should be sufficient to drop the > hyphens and enter a single string.
It is, in my opinion, bad practice to expect end users to properly format what are essentially numeric fields. I agree that ISBNs should be recorded as 10- or 13-digit numbers, but the software should be written to normalize any conceivable type of input into a hyphen-less form (it could also strip out obviously incorrect data, such as the letter "a", and could even do a ISBN checksum before allowing the data to be stored). Writing software is easy, training a host of data enterers is hard. _______________________________________________ Ol-discuss mailing list Ol-discuss@archive.org http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-discuss To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to ol-discuss-unsubscr...@archive.org
