Proposed record for 'alalc97'

[John Cowan]

Doug Ewell scripsit:

> > Also, note that the ISBN is the old 10-digit format. ISBN recently 
> > (2007) switched to a 13-digit format (mostly starting with "978-").
> 
> Does that apply retroactively to a book published in 1997?

Yes it does.  The 978 has always been present on the bar code on the book
(to distinguish books from other consumer goods), so this change just
makes it explicit.  In any case, the old ISBN space was running out of
room, so there are now books beginning 979.

However, the last digit is a checksum, and may need to change
when the 978 is prepended.  Fortunately, the web page at
http://www.isbn.org/converterpub.asp will do the conversion for you,
and the book's new-style ISBN is in fact 978-0-8444-0940-5.

Michael, you are allowed to ignore this.

-- 
We call nothing profound                        cowan at ccil.org
that is not wittily expressed.                  John Cowan
        --Northrop Frye (improved)