Comment Re:How far back are we talking? (Score 1) 391
Actually, you will have many unique IDs for each book. For public domain material, there is no limit to the number of different publishers that could print a book. Even for recent publications, books can change publishers (and publishers can change names, merge, etc.), resulting in considerable variation in the ISBN.
But this is exactly the behaviour you would want. You want to keep a seperate ID for books between editions and different editors, remember that a lot of books go through changes in these processes, so the texts are probably not the same.
You would also want to keep that difference in a book database, otherwise the information would not be complete.
But this is exactly the behaviour you would want. You want to keep a seperate ID for books between editions and different editors, remember that a lot of books go through changes in these processes, so the texts are probably not the same.
You would also want to keep that difference in a book database, otherwise the information would not be complete.
