Knowledge Center Information

Information about Bookland EAN and ISBN.

Bookland has no borders.

Bookland is a make believe place where all books exist and have a unique number. In order to encode these ISBN numbers in barcodes the EAN-13 barcode symbology is used. In the beginning of Bookland, it was decided by the creators that 978 would be the prefix used to encode ISBN numbers into the EAN-13 barcode symbology.

Imagine the chaos in bookland if numbers representing non-book items such as paper shreaders were to enter Bookland. Thus the Bookland creators thought it wise to create an algorithm so that the EAN-13 barcode symbology and the Bookland ISBN numbers could all live in harmony. This also insured that Bookland would remain pure and not have it's borders overrun by non-book items.

As Bookland is very popular for books, like all popular places it continues to grow. Bookland growth being so rapid, that it is required to expand the borders of Bookland to accomodate all the new books that need to live there. Before Jan 1, 2007 all books in Bookland had a number of 978 as the first 3 digits of their EAN-13 number. The creators decided that after Jan 1, 2007 bookland's borders would be expanded to also accomidate books that had 979 starting their EAN-13 label.

In summary, the important thing to know about Bookland is if you want to scan a barcode on a book your barcode scanner or software must know about the history of Bookland so that it will give you the correct information about the ISBN number.

SerialMagic products know the history of Bookland and will properly perform the EAN-13 to ISBN conversion.

EAN stands for European Article Numbering. Global marketing has changed this so that it is now supposed to mean International Article Numbering.