There was a lively discussion on the topicmapmail discussion list about books and whether they have any universal identifiers. (Look in the archives for July, 2010 and messages with MARC in the subject line.)
There are known problems with ISBNs, such as publishers re-using them or assigning duplicate ISBNs to different books or simply making mistakes with the numbers themselves.
It was reported by one participant that Amazon uses it own unique identifier for books.
The United States Library of Congress has its own internal identifier for books in its collection.
Not to mention that other library systems have their own identifiers for their collections.
At a minimum, it is possible for a book, considered as a subject, to have an ISBN, an identifier from Amazon, another identifier at the Library of Congress and still others in other systems. Perhaps even a unique identifier from a book jobber that sells books to libraries.
If you think about that for a moment, it become clear that a book as a subject has a *set* of identifiers, all of which identify the same subject. Moreover, each of those identifiers works best in a particular context, dare we say the identifier has a scope?
If I had a representative (a topic) for this subject (book) that had a set of identifiers (ISBN, ASIN, LOC, etc.) and each of those identifiers had a scope, I could reliably import information from any source that used at least one of those identifiers.
The originators of those identifiers can use continue to use their identifiers and yet enjoy the benefits of information that was generated or collected using other identifiers.
Topic maps anyone?
I should probably add that ASINs are used for everything for sale at Amazon, I think, not just books. =)
And yes! Identifiers have scope! Ah scope, my favorite part of topic maps.
Comment by Marijane — July 20, 2010 @ 10:09 am