Standard Book Number

At Florida’s Coleman prison, the restrictions were to have taken effect on May 14 and would have mandated that prisoners file an electronic request including the 13-digit International Standard Book Number, according to the March 29 memo by the warden.

If books are to become living documents after their original publication—and I believe they should in many cases—we have another major hurdle: the book-numbering system called ISBN, or International Standard Book Number, a unique identifier created for commercial purposes.

If there is no bar code, she checks the International Standard Book Number on the copyright page.