> Somewhere around 11 PM on a Tuesday — it's always a Tuesday — you will attempt to catalog a book printed in Lyon in 1642 and the software will ask for an ISBN. Not politely. Insistently. A red border. A validation error. A small, pixel-perfect indignity.
What kind of crappy software are you using? It would exclude pretty much every serious archive (and quite a lot of home libraries too).
> The problem is the assumption, baked so deeply into most software that it's become invisible, that the ISBN is the identifier […]
Which software makes this assumption? I can register any book I like in Zotero.
> Try selling on a marketplace that requires an ISBN for listing.
Which marketplaces? ABEBooks lists rare antique first editions without any ISBN (which no antique item can have if we assume antique means a century old at least) without issue.
Name and shame them. This article now feels like it describes a real problem, but offers no concrete examples, which makes it feel like a rant aimed at a non-existent problem.
4 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 13.4 ms ] threadThe site's tagline is
> For collectors & dealers who take books seriously
But they can't even take writing one article seriously; I'm not interested in opinions on books from people who take zero care with their own output.
What kind of crappy software are you using? It would exclude pretty much every serious archive (and quite a lot of home libraries too).
> The problem is the assumption, baked so deeply into most software that it's become invisible, that the ISBN is the identifier […]
Which software makes this assumption? I can register any book I like in Zotero.
> Try selling on a marketplace that requires an ISBN for listing.
Which marketplaces? ABEBooks lists rare antique first editions without any ISBN (which no antique item can have if we assume antique means a century old at least) without issue.
Name and shame them. This article now feels like it describes a real problem, but offers no concrete examples, which makes it feel like a rant aimed at a non-existent problem.