Today, abbreviated, is 6/26/26. Isn’t that fun?
To thoroughly geek out about numbers, watch today’s video about the origin of the ISBN number. Yes. It is interesting.
I’ve written before about this seemingly unimportant little piece of publishing. Enjoy these other articles:
“I Is for ISBN”
“The ISBN Turns 50”
Then click on today’s video and enjoy a visual ride through the wonders of this invention.
(By the way, would anyone like to go to Bookland with me?)
[If you can’t see the video in the newsletter feed, click through to the site and enjoy it.]
To keep track of all His friends
(sorry, but I can’t resist)
did The Christ achieve His ends
by using an evangel-list?
Or are we all bar-coded,
unique to every soul,
upon tapes that are loaded
into IBMs that roll
and hum in Heaven, back and forth,
scanning through the time we spent
from our mortal start at birth
through the days that we’ve been lent
to glorify Great God above
with our deepest, brightest love?
Thank you for sharing! I’d love to go to Bookland. I was a copy cataloger for 12 years, so I appreciate this information. Kind of nerding out over here!
The video mentions the new ISBN code using 979, instead of 978. But what is not mentioned (and as far as I can tell is never mentioned anywhere) is the fact that having the 979 code is problematic, as I found out with my latest book. Many applications do not recognize the 979 code, such as Bookscan, and therefore one cannot get retail sales data for such books. Some bookstores also do not seem to recognize the 979 codes, and do not keep such books in stock. Again, I have found very few if any discussions of this problem. Hopefully it will be resolved at some point.
Yes. Interesting! is the word that covers it all.