Wikipedia talk:Deletion review/Log/2010 September 29


 * The International ISBN agency clearly recognized this potential, and in 1980 contacted its counterpart, EAN International, asking the governing body to devise an ISBN-based bar coding system for books. Their efforts resulted in what came to be known as the “Bookland EAN” bar coding standard, which gets its name for what may appear to be an unusual reason. “Since the book industry produces so many products”, a trade source explains, “it has been designated as a country unto itself and has been assigned its own EAN prefix. That prefix is 978 and it signifies Bookland, that wonderful, fictitious country where all books come from”.49 As capricious as that may sound, EAN International's decision to designate the book industry a “country” was calculated and practical, allowing the book industry largely to preserve the integrity of the ISBN structure within the EAN coding scheme (Figure 3) EAN barcode for a book intended for sale in a bookstore. Note the EAN code's incorporation of the ISBN, with the 978 “Bookland” prefix. The check digits differ due to this addition.  Having observed Bookland EAN's successful implementation in Europe, the U.S. Book Industry Systems Advisory Council endorsed the bar coding system in 1985, and less than a year later started testing it in the U.S..50 Actually implementing Bookland EAN in the United States presented its own set of challenges, however, given the growing entrenchment there of the UPC. Indeed, only in the late 1980s did the U.S. book industry finally arrive at a compromise solution on the intractable matter of machine readable book codes. All books intended for sale in bookstores would be imprinted exclusively with the Bookland EAN barcode. Mass-market and other books intended for sale at “non-book outlets” (e.g., supermarkets, pharmacies, warehouse/price clubs, etc.) would be the exception. They would be imprinted with both symbols, since in most cases the retailers who sold these books only could decode UPC barcodes, if any (Figure 4).51