This Symbology is also known as International Standard Book Number, Bookland EAN, ISBN-13, ISBN-10, ISBN+5, ISBN+2, ISBN Supplement 5/Five-digit Add-On, ISBN Supplement 2/Two-digit Add-On

ISBN stands for International Standard Book Number - a unique identifier assigned to each edition of every published book and book-like product. The purpose of the ISBN is to establish and identify one title or edition of a title from one specific publisher and is unique to that edition, allowing for more efficient marketing of products by booksellers, libraries, universities, wholesalers and distributors.

The ISBN was originally developed as a 10-digit number, which for more than three decades has performed extremely well as a catalog number for books. However, the International ISBN Agency has determined that sometime in the not-too-distant future they will begin to run out of 10-digit numbers for publishers. Accordingly, in January 2007, the ISBN will be redefined from a 10-digit to a 13-digit number.

BarcodeItem supports both ISBN-10 as well as ISBN-13 numbers and thus, you can pass to it both type of ISBNs as the value to encode. All ISBN-10 number is automatically converted to ISBN-13 by BarcodeItem.

The ISBN number is either 10 or 13 digits long and consists of four or five parts:

• If 13-digit ISBN, a GS1 Prefix, either 978 or 979
• The country of origin or language code
• The publisher number which is assigned by the national ISBN agency
• The item number
• The checksum character which ensures that each ISBN is valid, meaning that the number is correct

Notes

• The different parts can have different lengths and are usually separated by hyphens (-)
• The "X" that you see at the end of some ISBNs is a Roman numeral, a way of putting the number "10" into a single digit

The Add-On Symbols were designed to encode information supplementary to that in the main bar code symbol on periodicals and paperback books. The Add-On can be composed of 2 or 5 digits only. For ISBN barcodes a Five-digit Add-On is usually used for the Retail Suggested Price.

Sample of an ISBN Five-Digit Add-On Barcode

Light Margin Indicators - a greater than (>) and/or less than (<) character - are intended to protected the essential light areas to the left and right of the code that the barcode scanner needs to recognize the beginning and end.

In order to get an ISBN barcode image, please follow these steps:

• Set the Symbology property to Isbn
• Setting up dimensions and quiet zones:
  • Set the BarWidth property to 0.013 (Value is expressed in Inches)
  • Set the BarHeight property to 0.9 (Value is expressed in Inches)
  • If Guard Bars are needed:
    • Set the EanUpcGuardBar property to True
    • Set the EanUpcGuardBarHeight property to 0.965 (Value is expressed in Inches)
  • Set the QuietZone property to 0.091, 0, 0.091, 0 - Left, Top, Right, Bottom (Value is expressed in Inches)
• Set the Code property with an ISBN number. You can specify 10-digit ISBN as well as 13-digit ISBN
• Add-On Settings if needed:
  • Set the EanUpcSupplement to Digits2 (Two-Digit Add-On) or Digits5 (Five-Digit Add-On)
  • Set the EanUpcSupplementCode with the Add-On value which must be 2 or 5 digits only
• Drawn Light Margin Indicators if needed:
  • Set the DisplayLightMarginIndicator to True
• Set the Text property to ISBN + number string

Code property = 0-7356-2153-5, DisplayLightMarginIndicator property = True, EanUpcSupplement property = Digits5, and EanUpcSupplementCode property = 90000, and Text property = ISBN 0-7356-2153-5 will produce the following barcode image: