invalid ISBN Archives - Problem Cataloger

An account of the assassination of loyal citizens of North Carolina, for having served in the Union Army, which took place at Kingston in the months of February and March, 1864 / by Rush C. Hawkins. (OCLC #993606950)

This volume includes this ISBN statement on the title page verso:

    ISBN: 4444000055732PB

though only the digits appear in the book’s barcode.

An ISBN is considered to be structurally invalid when “its length or structure is incorrect or its check digit does not agree with the formula for calculating it.” This one has 13 digits, and the final digit DOES match what would be computed by the check digit formula:

    (4 + 3*4 + 4 + 3*4 + 0 + 3*0 + 0 + 3*0 + 5 + 3*5 + 7 + 3*3
         + digit) mod 10 = 0
      (68 + digit) mod 10 = 0
      digit = 2

But it is otherwise not structurally correct; in particular, it does not start with a GS1 ISBN prefix (978 or 979).

Such ISBNs are still recorded in the 020 field in MARC, but in ǂz instead of ǂa:

    020 __ ǂz 4444000055732

Venice lessons : industrial nostalgia : teaching and research in architecture / [editors, Harry Gugger [and five others]]. (OCLC #967143333)

This nice book showed up as a problem this morning. It seemed fine at first glance: a nice title page and verso matching the information on the cover, including title, author and publisher, and an ISBN (on the back cover and front matter), all matching the content in this DLC record.

BUT that record (and similar ones) all described a resource with around 60 pages, where the one in hand had 216 pages. Indeed, only about the first 60 pages appear to be children’s book material; there’s no new title page after that, but the content changes to a more serious work about the historic architecture of Venice; I’d have thought it was a bound-with, given the tape binding, but the pagination is continuous.

We found a record that matched the whole piece in hand, and included as explanation:

500 __ ǂa Contains no title page, title from cover.
500 __ ǂa "This is Venice", by Miroslav Sasek's is reprinted in its entirety and published 2016 as part of the larger work "Venic Lessons".

There was no second title page for the actual title of this book (“Venice lessons : industrial nostalgia : teaching and research in architecture”), only tiny print on the cover that is now mostly obscured by our barcode. Maybe there was a dust jacket that didn’t make it to cataloging? Also, a closer look at the children’s book content reveals added annotations in lighter print throughout.

To aid future catalogers who receive this piece, we’ve added the barcode from the front matter/back cover as an invalid barcode:

020 __ ǂz 9780789312235

and also a cover title:

246 3_ ǂa This is Venice