ISBN / Bookland EAN-13

Overview

Overview

ISBN numbers (International Standard Book Number) are the international order numbers for books. For books they are similar to the EAN-13 barcode for food.

An ISBN barcode is created using the EAN-13 symbology with a special prefix, for example the prefix 978. So the ISBN is a special form of the EAN-13 code. This special form is also called Bookland EAN-13.

ActiveBarcode supports the unterforms ISBN-13, ISBN-13 dual and ISBN-10 completely:

ISBN-13 International Standard Book Number. ISBN standard type since 01. January 2007.
ISBN-13 Dual International Standard Book Number. ISBN transitional type from 01. January 2006 to 31. December 2006.
ISBN-10 International Standard Book Number. ISBN standard type until 31. December 2005.


The different types

The original ISBN-10 barcode was used until the 31. December 2005. In future the numbering capacity of this code would no longer be sufficient. So the length of an ISBN was raised from 10 to 13 digits. Therefore the ISBN-10 code was replaced with the ISBN-13 at 01. January 2007. In the transition period the ISBN-13 dual code was applied.

Add On codes

Often the ISBN code is used in addition with the EAN 5 add-on to show the price of a book:

Barcode ISBNBarcode AddOn 5

A book with ISBN and EAN 5 add-on for showing the price ($ 79.00)