The Search for Elisabeth Brandt

[Richard]

there is an 11 digit # on the spine, but I have been unable to associate it with a valid ISBN13 (I assume it needs country code & check digit, but every combination I tried returned no google search results).

440-07839-095

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Not every numerical designation on a book is an ISBN. I assume it's this book? The 095 at the end reflects its price.

And a book published in 1969/1970 would certainly not have had an ISBN13, and quite likely would not have had an ISBN10. Looks like this one doesn't have one.

[Richard]

No, but I've been finding that on many mass market paperback novels after 1970 but before the use of UPC barcodes, the ISBN may be printed on the spine but nowhere else. I figured a librarian who actually knows something about SBNs & ISBNs might be able to make more sense of it than I could.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Richard wrote: "No, but I've been finding that on many mass market paperback novels after 1970 but before the use of UPC barcodes, the ISBN may be printed on the spine but nowhere else."

Yes, I own a few like that from the early 70s. It seems not to be the case here.

[Richard]

I'm seeing a lot of 9 digit SBNs from this era, but usually included on the copyright page. I'm looking at another dell book with the same # format. If the last part is the price, and the middle part seems to be dell's catalog #, would the 1st part be a category/genre code? Interesting...

[vicki_girl]

I believe it is actually earlier ISBN coding. "440" is the publisher code for Dell. If you drop the 095 price, and add a leading 0, you get

0-440-07839

There are tools are available online to then get the check digit, which is 3 for this number. So your ISBN should be

0-440-07839-3

[Richard]

7839 is Dell's catalog # in the top corner of the front cover, & I'm seeing the same format from another publisher that uses letters in their catalog number.
A german internet bookseller seems to be using it as the ISBN
http://www.eurobuch.com/buch/isbn/044...

Please Stop Killing Me! uses the number
451-Y4584-125
Signet Non-fiction-Y4584-$1.25

[vicki_girl]

Richard wrote: "7839 is Dell's catalog # in the top corner of the front cover, & I'm seeing the same format from another publisher that uses letters in their catalog number.
A german internet bookseller seems to be using it as the ISBN
http://www.eurobuch.com/buch/isbn/044...

Please Stop Killing Me! uses the number
451-Y4584-125
Signet Non-fiction-Y4584-$1.25 "

For the Signet book, the 125 is again the price. Dropping that and converting you get 045104584X as the ISBN, which can be found here:

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11...

Looks like your book and the link above need to be merged.

There is a detailed explanation regarding these types of items in the following thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8...

[Richard]

vicki_girl wrote: "There is a detailed explanation regarding these types of items in the following thread:
http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/8..."

Very helpful. I copied your post to a text edit file & will try to remember to keep an eye out for this with any future additions from the early 1970's.

[Richard]

While we're on the topic here, converting 451-MY987-125 (Technological Change: Its Impact on Man and Society) to ISBN 0451009878 conflicts with a completely different book.

& for Deliverance 440-01868-125 should have been converted to ISBN 0440018684 (currently using 4400186812).

[vicki_girl]

Richard wrote: "While we're on the topic here, converting 451-MY987-125 (Technological Change: Its Impact on Man and Society) to ISBN 0451009878 conflicts with a completely different book.

& for Deliverance 440-0..."

For Technological change, the ISBN probably got reused for another book. I added the catalog number to the edition field to help others find it. that's the best we are going to be able to do for that one.

For deliverance, someone put in 440-01868-125 as the ISBN, and the database cut off the last digit to make it fit (all dashes are removed automatically). I went ahead and fixed it.