Thread: Preserving the hyphens in ISBN number
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Old 02-18-2019, 06:52 PM   #3
gbm
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Cynosarges View Post
Is there any way in Calibre to preserve the hyphens in the ISBN in the Ids field?

I am raising this question after spotting the spotty quality of the Publisher field that the Download Metadata obtains from Amazon, Google Books and OCLC Worldcat.

The ISBN has a formal structure 978 (EAN prefix) - <Registration group> (approximates to language) - <Registrant> (Publisher/Imprint) - <Publication element> (Publisher's book/edition Id) - <Check digit>
This means that the ISBN encodes an authorative identifier for publishers, not subect to the vagaries of data entry by Amazon, Google Books, or library staff.

This would allow identification and correction of Metadata errors, using Calibre's catalogue function to list publisher and ISBN, ordered by ISBN. However, as the elements are variable length, it is far easier to see the Registrant if the hyphens remain in the data.

I don't want to add a Custom column, as this would duplicate data. Currently, I am considering exporting a CSV file, and writing an Excel macro to insert hyphens. However this is an ugly fudge, and I wondered whether there was any way to stop Calibre removing the hyphens (and loosing useful information in the process).
I just checked a epub downloaded from the publisher--a big five publisher--direct, unzipped it using Archive Manger, checked the opf file, and the isbn has no hyphens.

bernie
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