International Standard Book Number - EAN Format Used in Barcodes, and Upgrading

EAN Format Used in Barcodes, and Upgrading

Currently the barcodes on a book's back cover (or inside a mass-market paperback book's front cover) are EAN-13; they may have a separate barcode encoding five digits for the currency and the recommended retail price. The number "978", the Bookland "country code", is prefixed to the ISBN in the barcode data, and the check digit is recalculated according to the EAN13 formula (modulo 10, 1x and 3x weighting on alternate digits).

Partly because of an expected shortage in certain ISBN categories, the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) decided to migrate to a thirteen-digit ISBN (ISBN-13). The process began January 1, 2005 and was planned to conclude January 1, 2007. As of 2011, all the 13-digit ISBNs begin with 978. As the 978 ISBN supply is exhausted, the 979 prefix will be introduced. This is expected to occur more rapidly outside the United States. Originally, 979 was the Musicland code for musical scores with an ISMN. However, ISMN codes will differ visually as they begin with an "M" letter; the bar code represents the "M" as a zero (0), and for checksum purposes it will count as a 3.

Publisher identification code numbers are unlikely to be the same in the 978 and 979 ISBNs, likewise, there is no guarantee that language area code numbers will be the same. Moreover, the ten-digit ISBN check digit generally is not the same as the thirteen-digit ISBN check digit. Because the EAN/UCC-13 is part of the Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) system (that includes the EAN/UCC-14, the UPC-12, and the EAN-8), it is expected that ISBN-generating software should accommodate fourteen-digit ISBNs.

Barcode format compatibility is maintained, because (aside from the group breaks) the ISBN-13 barcode format is identical to the EAN barcode format of existing ISBN-10s. So, migration to an EAN-based system allows booksellers the use of a single numbering system for both books and non-book products that is compatible with existing ISBN-based data, with only minimal changes to information technology systems. Hence, many booksellers (e.g., Barnes & Noble) migrated to EAN barcodes as early as March 2005. Although many American and Canadian booksellers were able to read EAN-13 barcodes before 2005, most general retailers could not read them. The upgrading of the UPC barcode system to full EAN-13, in 2005, eased migration to the ISBN-13 in North America.