Delirium wrote:
To sidestep the issue of partnering with booksellers
for a bit, I have
a more fundamental question: why do we have ISBN links at all? ISBN
numbers do not identify books; they identify particular printings of
books by particular publishers. Our job, as an encyclopedia, is to
discuss the books themselves; if the reader wishes to find which
publishers have the book currently in print in his or her country, I
don't see that as our role (there are plenty of places to look that
up, or ask your local bookstore). Not to mention that with the vast
majority of books we'd be interested in documenting in an
encyclopedia, there are dozens (sometimes hundreds!) of ISBN numbers
under which the book has been published. Are we going to end every
article on books with a lengthy list of ISBN numbers? Or are we going
to arbitrarily pick one from our favorite publisher? I'd propose we
instead just leave them out entirely.
We had this discussion a long (long, long) time ago, and AFAIR we came
up with this
* There's no (useful) standard to identify an "abstract" book (in
contrast to the "concrete" print)
* Giving *one* print of a book is better than none
* Some (many?) online book sellers list other prints of that book
* Many books (e.g, novels) come as hardcover and paperback, so just link
to the (cheaper) paperback
Someone ought to dig through the mailing list archives in case I
forgot/altered some of the above, though :-)
Magnus