I did a little more research and found this short paragraph at the ISBN.org home. I think it's interesting that only 159 countries and territories are members and use the numbers. That and the fact the numbers have been in use for only 3 decades (I wasn't too far off) would explain why many books don't have them--although I'm sure all the major countries that have a lot of book publishing are among the 129. Cindy The ISBN is a unique machine-readable identification number, which marks any book unmistakably. For 30 years the ISBN has revolutionized the international book-trade. 159 countries and territories are officially ISBN members. http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/index.asp __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com