ISBN-10

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number, i.e. International Standard Book Number. ISBN is a unique, machine-readable identification number that uniquely identifies a book. The book number began to be used from 1966, first as a 9-digit book code (SBN) published in Britain, and from 1970 it was extended to 10 digits and became international.

The ISBN, assigned to books until 2006 contained 10 digits length and consist of four fields of variable length:

For a 13 digit ISBN, a GS1 prefix: 978 or 979.

The group identifier, (language-sharing country group).

The publisher code.

The item number.

A checksum character or check digit.

An “ISBN-10” barcode.

Information

The ‘human readable’ digits at the foot which can be used by operators if the label becomes damaged or will not scan for some reason - “80-902734-1-6” is the number encoded in the barcode.