also impact on editorial processes, sales and marketing, design and production

departments, as well as royalty and accounting functions in publishing houses. 

A possible 

 but not exhaustive 

 list of systems that might be affected in a publishing

organisation is as follows:

  ISBN allocation

  Product information

  Editorial management

  Production systems

  E book supply systems

  Order fulfilment/warehouse management

  Accounting

  Rights and contracts

  Rights management and royalty systems

Booksellers will need to review, among other possible areas:

  Ordering systems

  Stock control

  Point of sale systems

  Accounting

Libraries will need to review:

  Acquisitions systems including transaction messages with trading partners

  Cataloguing and other bibliographic data entry systems

  Interlibrary loan systems

  Bibliographic record importing routines

  Bar code scanners

  Local catalogues

  Information portal/metasearch systems

  Interoperability with remote information sources and clients

  System links to and from remote content and services

  Other ISBN related functions and systems

Communication with trading partners

Clear decisions and communication of them, regarding timing and methods of

implementation are crucial to the smooth introduction of the new standard. All

organisations are encouraged as part of their own internal reviews to share their

implementation plans and timetables with all their trading partners and ensure that those

partners are also taking similar implementation measures.

Other considerations

With the possibility available to the book trade to adopt further prefixes for 13 digit ISBNs

in the future, the system is likely to remain in its newly defined structure for many years to

come. However, developers may be wise to bear in mind some additional possible

scenarios relating to field lengths: 

  Some organisations are taking an interest in a 14 digit GTIN (Global Trade Item

Number), where the 13 digit ISBN is prefixed by an additional digit that can be

used as a packaging level indicator by agreement between trading partners. 

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