02.08.2010
06.05.2010
Photo: www.bowker.com
Google Editions will have ISBNs
An agreement between Google and Bowler, the ISBN agency in USA, has been announced today (5 May 2010) for the use of ISBNs in the Google Editions, expected to be launched later in 2010. The agreement is based on similar arrangements made with other digital retailers and endorsed by the ISBN International Agency. The key principle is that publishers have the primary responsibility to assign a separate ISBN to any different digital edition, so including the Google ones. However, if publishers do not do, Google is authorised to assign ISBNs on their behalf (though under a "Google prefix".)
This model, as previous cases demonstrated, balances the need of maintaining within the publishers sphere the task of ISBN assignment, and the need of any retailer to have a comprehensive system, where all books carry an ISBN. The agreement confirms the importance of the ISBN standard in the new digital environment.
"Both Google and Bowker will encourage publishers to retain primary responsibility for assigning their own ISBNs to their respective Google Editions and including these records as part of the catalog data they distribute to their trading partners", the Bowker press release reports. This educational part of the agreement is particularly important from a European viewpoint. It will be important that European publishers, if and when joining the Google Editions (or other similar platforms), will properly assign ISBNs and communicate the data to the respective ISBN agency and Books in print.
This will have consequences for the ARROW system, which relies on the comprehensiveness of the European data sources for the determination of the commercial status of a work. One of the possible use of the Google Editions is to revitalise books that went out of print in the paper edition. If the information about the publication of the Google edition will not enter the usual data sources, they will be considered as still out of print during the Arrow data processing. Of course, this applies to the Google editions as well as any other act of "making available" of the previously out of print book.
It is worth remembering that at the beginning of the ARROW project, when the Google Settlement was announced, the Arrow team involved in the WP4 - Interoperability (lead by the Bibliothèque National de France) produced a document entitled "Notes on Google-AAP-AG Settlement agreement and use of standards" (24 Nov 2008) that triggered the discussion in the relevant standard communities at international level. Already at that time we called for proper use of the ISBNs in the new editions produced by Google, precisely in the terms that today the agreement with Bowker provides. The result of that discussion - very relevant for the definition of the Arrow approach to the subject - is now available in the Deliverable 4.1 Standard applicable (http://www.arrow-net.eu/sites/default/files/D4.1_State_of_the_art_guidel...)
More information on the Bowker-Google agreement can be accessed at http://www.isbn.org/standards/home/isbn/google.asp
