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My professors usually include the title, author, and edition in the syllabus. Harvard's syllabi are all online, apparently, so it's probably possible to get the information about the books, including ISBN, by looking up the book online using available information. However, if one is running a website which attempts to provide pricing information on all the required books for a semester, this would be quite a lengthy process. A script running off the ISBNs would be much more efficient. So I can see why the students wanted to be able to go through the Coop and copy the ISBNs. But that's a level of convenience I don't think the Coop is required to provide. If an individual student wants to get prices and ISBNs for their books from the Coop and check prices elsewhere, I think they should be able to do that. But going through the entire textbook floor and copying down ISBNs and prices... I guess I can see why the Coop would try to block that. I don't know as they legally can block it, but I can see why they would try.
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