|
All About Books and Barcodes
Book
basics
In your Groqit's "Books" category, you will be able to store
information by barcode, on books that have them. When the
information gets translated on this website, the Books category
(or books in any categories you create (such as "SCIENCE" or "ART")
will have new information besides the barcodes. Files sorted by
Author, Title, and ISBN, will be provided. You can look
up books by Author, for instance, and then a list of Titles under
that Author. If you prefer you can start your search under
Title; if there's more than one book in your collection with
the same title, you can narrow the search by Author, Date, or
ISBN.
Top
What are all
those numbers?
How a book is identified depends somewhat on when and how it was
published. Many books have no identifying numbers.
The four most common numbers are the EAN (European Article Number),
the ISBN (International Standard Book Number and earlier the Standard
Book Number), the UPC (Universal Product Code) and the Library
of Congress Catalog Number.
Top
EAN
Newer books should have an EAN (European Article Number). There
are two forms in common usage: the EAN (which is 13 digits long)and
the EAN + 5 (18 digits). In the latter case, the last 5 digits
code the price.
This is what EAN barcodes can look like:
The EAN is often on the inside of the front cover of a book.
The first section of any EAN barcode is the EAN. The first three
numbers are the country code. If the first three numbers are 978 or 979,
this tells us this item is from "Bookland," which is the
imaginary country that all Books come from. The next nine numbers
are the ISBN (International Standard Book Number) and a checksum.
[More on this later]. The second section of the barcode tells
us the price.
Top
ISBN
ISBN identification (International Standard Book Number) was implemented
in 1970. [The earlier Standard Book Number was used from 1966 to
1974]
ISBNs have 10 digits. This is an example of an ISBN: ISBN 0-812-50394-5
A 10-digit ISBN can be converted to an EAN by adding the "Bookland" prefix
978 and changing the last digit to the new checksum. (No old
ISBN translates to a 979 Bookland code. Also, a 979 EAN is the ISBN, there is no ten digit version.
On some books, the ISBN will be coded with a two-height
barcode. Your Groqit cannot read this barcode type. (These
are extremely rare.)
Top
Price
Point UPC
North American books also use the UPC (Universal Product
Code) system. Trade paper backs may use a UPC-A and an EAN. The EAN should be scanned, as it is also the ISBN-13. For older paperbacks, if there's
a barcode, they use the Price Point UPC. The first section is
the UCC (Company Code), the last section is an item number. Unfortunately,
the price is smack in the middle! Which means, when the price changes, the UPC changes. In technical terms this system is "really stupid!" As of 1 January 2007 its use was discontinued, but there are many books out there with this number.
You can recognize a Price Point UPC by that price-in-the-middle
feature.
This
is what they look like:
If the only barcode on the
book is a Price Point UPC, scan it. Our subscription services
will translate this to the ISBN.
Be certain you get all 17 digits,
because if you only scan the large section you'll be missing
the ISBN portion. An easy way to check is to look at your
Groqit's display. Each line is 16 characters, so a correct scan
will wrap one digit to the second line.
If you see a Price Point UPC on the back of the book, check
to see if it has an EAN as well. (The EAN is often on
the inside of the front cover of a paperback book.) If it has
both barcodes, we strongly recommend entering the EAN.
Top
Odd
Codes
Large retailers find it useful to create thier own inventory-tracking
systems, using barcodes that relate to numbers in their central computer's
data-base but not necessarily to the world outside. They can print
up stickers with a barcode font that their computer understands,
but no one else can.
If you like to purchase used books,
there might be one of these internal inventory barcodes on it.
Your Groqit may or may not be able to read an inventory tag, because
there are many types of barcodes and barcode fonts. The Groqit
only understands the UPC/EAN font.
In this case, the ISBN is on the
tag. You can key it in manually. (Leave out the hyphens, please.)
Top
Problem books
My
book doesn't have a barcode
Look on the back of the title
page for the ISBN. You can key the ISBN into your Groqit manually,
or as a Member, do it online. Please leave out the hyphens.
ISBN identification (International Standard Book Number) was
implemented in 1970. A 10-digit ISBN can be converted to an EAN
by adding the "Bookland" prefix
978 and changing the last digit to the new checksum.
http://www.isbn.org/converterret.asp does
this for you.
If you want to understand more, go to http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp
Top
Library
of Congress Catalog Number
Older books may just have a LCCN. This doesn't translate to a UPC,
EAN or ISBN and although the Library of Congress has an online database,
it often only contains the number for a book's first edition. The
Groqit website can look up a LCCN and if that book
was assigned an EAN or ISBN, load both numbers back into your Groqit.
Top
No
numbers!
Look on the back of the title page for
the ISBN. You can key the ISBN into your Groqit manually, or
as a Member, do it online. Please leave out the hyphens. An
SBN will only have 8 digits. Add a zero in front and an X at
the end, please.
Another possible location for the ISBN or SBN is the spine.
 
The first image (0-441 20661-1 195) is an ISBN, the second
(449-01453-075) is an SBN. In the first case, please key in 0441206611.
In the second, add a zero in front and an X at the end: 044901453X
(we will calculate the checksum and replace the X). Leave out
the hyphens and the price (which is the last three digits in
both cases).
Some older
books and "book club" books have
no identifying numbers at all. All we can offer is a chance
to do a manual search for the book and if any edition was ever
assigned an ISBN or EAN, we can add that to your barcode file.
If not, we can still put the information in the author and
title files on your Groqit.
We do not have a clue what that 4
or 5 digit code on some book covers means. But we do know it
it not a standard reference number.
Top
Book
Versions
My Groqit said I
don't own this book and I do!
Your Groqit is dependent on the manufacturer's UPC and EAN barcodes.
When a book is published in hardback, paperback or a trade version,
when a title or cover art is changed for a new edition, when a
different company buys the publishing rights, some times even if
just the price changes, there is a new barcode for that version
of the book. Some older books that have been re-released over and
over may have ten or more different numbers.
We promise to do the best job we can with the data we receive
from our sources. They are not perfect and neither are we.
Anything you have keyed in will be in the Title and Author files,
but may not appear in the barcode list. Keep this in
mind when you are looking to see if you have a book that was
first published long ago, as the older the book is the less
likely it is to have been barcoded.
The Christian Bible has over 5,000 published versions!
Top
2005
Sunrise
The introduction of 2005 Sunrise restricts new UPC barcodes to USA
and Canada. As of 1 January 2007, all books will use the 13-digit
ISBN (aka EAN). Except, of course, those books published without
any numbers at all (like Book Club editions).
Top
How
do we deal with this mess?
The Publishers' International
ISBN Directory (PIID) lists 628,795 publishers from 218 countries,
regions and territories. Details of historical publishers
(marked as "ceased publishing"), author publishers - where known
- and more than 20,700 publishers without ISBN's from the USA.
We are working with our partners on a premium service that will
deal with this very tough problem. In the interim, we read your
barcode file, which will contain UPC/EAN/ISBN/LCCN codes and look
up each one.
Any book which has no identifying code will require an online
search by author and title. Whenever possible, we will translate
to an EAN, even if it isn't the exact edition you have. We will
use the newest EAN in print. This gives you the best chance of
catching re-prints.
When we download to your Groqit, the barcode file will contain the
UPC and ISBN and EAN, or the best matches we could find. The author,
title and publisher files will contain the exact information you
entered, for a final check.
Top
.
|
