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FAQs: ISBN (International Standard Book Number)
return to list of ISBN (International Standard Book Number) FAQ topics About Information Standards
What are information standards?
"Information standards" describes a universally agreed-upon set of guidelines for interoperability among the various parties involved in a specific industry. In the case of the publishing industry, examples of such a standard would be the ISBN (International Standard Book System), SAN (Standard Address Number), ISMN (International Standard Music Number), and DOI (Digital Object Identifier). Why are information standards so important in the publishing industry?
During the nineteenth century there developed in the U.K. and the U.S. pioneering efforts to systemize and cumulate the catalogs of publishers' output, to the benefit of booksellers, wholesalers and librarians. This work was based at least partly on the premise that maintaining a smooth flow of accurate information about the various aspects of the publishing industry helps to keep the industry healthy. Who regulates information standards?
The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is the world's largest developer and publisher of International Standards. The ISO is a non-governmental network of the national standards institutes of 157 countries, one member per country, with a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, that coordinates the system. What is EAN?
EAN stands for "International Article Number" and is the 13-digit standard for product identification in global trade. EANs are distributed by EAN International, an organization that also establishes the standards and rules for assigning numbers to products and encoding these numbers in readable bar codes, electronic data interchange (EDI), and RFID messages.
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