ITPEC IP October 2019 Question 73
Which of the following codes is used as an international standard for identifying a book?
Explanation
ISBN — the International Standard Book Number, defined by ISO 2108, identifies a book.
Each edition and format of a book gets its own 13-digit ISBN: the prefix 978 or 979, a registration group (language or country), a publisher, a title and a check digit. Publishers, booksellers and libraries use it to order and catalogue books worldwide. On the cover it is printed as an EAN bar code, so a point-of-sale scanner can read it like any product code.
Answer (a)
Why not others:
- •(b) ITF — Interleaved Two of Five, a bar code printed on shipping cartons to identify the packed goods in distribution
- •(c) JAN — the Japanese Article Number, the bar code that identifies a product and its maker at the point of sale; it is not a book identifier
- •(d) QR — a two-dimensional code that holds much more data, such as URLs, in a small area; it carries any data rather than identifying books
Key rule: ISBN identifies books, ISSN serials, JAN (EAN) retail products, ITF shipping cartons; QR is a general-purpose two-dimensional code.
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