Hey Sarah,
Before you go interpretting code, just try googling, here's a direct
link to a site that gives guidelines. Of course I can't vouch for its
'validity' but lots of other results popped up as well.
http://www.cs.queensu.ca/home/bradbury/checkdigit/isbncheck.htm
If I remember correctly the last digit of the ISBN, which is always one digit by itself proceeded by a dash, is actually a kind of checksum for the rest of the ISBN. X is a 10. Unfortunately I don't know how to make the calculation necessary to make sure an ISBN is valid. I might be able to get ahold of that information, though. There might be a visual basic program on a computer around here that has some code for checking ISBN validity, and if it can be found I can look at what it does.
Sarah Van Oosterwijck Assistive Technology Trainer http://home.earthlink.net/~netentity
----- Original Message ----- From: "Mike Pietruk" <pietruk@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Wednesday, October 12, 2005 3:53 PM
Subject: [bksvol-discuss] ISBN Numbers
This afternoon, I was doing preliminary validation work on a step 1 book and discovered something interesting which might prove of value. In one of my searches, I ended up at
www.thecheapestbook.com
where one can enter an isbn number to verify its validity or search for the book.
Well, I got back an invalid number, not a surprise, but the explanation was somewhat enlightening. A correct isbn number must contain, according to this, either 10 digits or 9 digits plus an "x". Perhaps this might explain why some attempts to supply an ISBN when submitting a book falls flat presumably due to the number failing to scan properly.
Mike
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