Do you convert?

[madbaker]

ISBNs (International Standard Book Number, for those bibliophobes out there…) are going from ten digits to thirteen as of January 1, 2007. Any books I buy next year will be in the new format; books published now have both.

I'm curious what people think: should I convert all my ISBNs to the new format?

[Poll #798889]
A few bonus points for correctly guessing the header reference.

Comments

[lifeofglamour.livejournal.com]

Do you actually keep a database of all your books by ISBN?
The OCD club has a new master...

[maestrateresa.livejournal.com]

Are you really *that* bored?
I could *find* you something to do...

[tshuma]

Wow, am I the only one who cared to vote on the question other than questioning your sanity?

I would keep both formats, but over time, I would convert the old to the new. So that by the time I was done, some of my books would have two IBSN records, but all of them would have an ISBN in the new format. The new books would simply have a code in the old ISBN field that would indicate they were too new to have an old code, or the field would be null for them. It might play havoc with your database schema, but it shouldn't be too difficult to adapt. Regardless, I'd enter both numbers for them for a while.

[hrj.livejournal.com]

Um ... no, he isn't the only one. *raises hand* I keep a database of all my books that includes all the standard bibliographic information including ISBN, information on format, used/new status, where/from whom I obtained the book, and a 4-5 level indexing system identifying key aspects of the topic and context. I keep meaning to add fields for date purchased/obtained and cost, but since I have no intention of trying to add that data retroactively, it seems less critical. A condensed version lives on my PDA so that I can double-check whether I already own a book before accidentally buying a duplicate. (Spectacular duplication failures that drove me to this include a $200 volume in the "Agrarian History of England and Wales" series. One of these days I'll see what I can recover off that one.)

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Perhaps you are more driven than I am, but I'd be concerned that if I felt I had to convert the old ones, it would be a huge bottleneck, and I'd end up not even entering the new ones in disgust at the large task ahead of me.

So... entering the new ones takes priority over correcting the old ones, by a landslide, but if you don't tend to have these internal conflicts, then by all means convert the old ones also.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

I'm just going to widen the field in my own database for tracking my books ... no big deal. New ISBN will be used for new stuff, and old for old.

[goldenstag.livejournal.com]

I'm not quite that anal, but I don't do the level of research you do. However, I do have the ISBN for many of my books in the database. I know I don't have it for all of 'em. And I know most of the spouse's books are not in the database, because it's a time-consuming process and she has better things to do than catalog all her books. Oh well.

And one of the reasons that I did this was to try to avoid purchasing duplicates, like you (although I know I have never done this quite as spectacularly as you!). It's irritating to say "OOH! A new book by <insert favorite author's name>" only to purchase it, get home, and realize you've had it and read it years ago, but the publishers put a new cover on it, and ...

[wufmew.livejournal.com]

When I worked at a state historical society they left the old stuff as is and just housed everything in the same cateloging system together. It made it easier to find stuff. Might not be practical for a home book collection where you would likely just list topics together, but I'd still leave the old number alone.

Not my hand, but pointing over there....

[patsmor.livejournal.com]

Aldric does, too -- his database not only has publisher, ISBN, etc., etc., but all the names & authors of all the stories in the anthologies. He keeps a copy on his PDA, too, to prevent buying dups. Of course he's got about 12,000 SF books, so it's harder not to duplicate stuff. (When I first met him in 1979 he was already keeping this database, and has converted it from platform to platform as he goes along...)