kshawkin / Best-Practices-for-TEI-in-Libraries

Best Practices for TEI in Libraries: A guide for mass digitization, automated workflows, and promotion of interoperability with XML using the TEI
http://purl.oclc.org/NET/teiinlibraries
32 stars 8 forks source link

format of ISBNs and ISSNs #91

Open kshawkin opened 5 years ago

kshawkin commented 5 years ago

In the header table, we should specify whether to include hyphens in ISBNs and ISSNs. (The sample header shows hyphens for an ISBN, but you shouldn't have to rely on the sample.)

The ISSN standard (ISO/DIS 3297) is being revised and will likely include the following recommendation for metadata capture:

9.2 Publishers of serials and other continuing resources should record two types of elements:

  • the ISSN itself, using a dedicated metadata field. Precise data elements should be used whenever possible. If there is no ISSN element in the metadata format (e.g. unqualified Dublin Core), identifier element or equivalent may be used. In the machine readable presentation, the prefix "ISSN" and space shall not be used. However, when ISSN strings are exchanged between systems, the hyphen should not be omitted, since some applications may expect ISSN strings to contain it.
  • a link to the URI corresponding to the continuing resource on the online ISSN Register itself.

While this makes sense for ISSNs (where the hyphen only ever occurs after the fourth digit), this is harder for ISBNs, where the position of hyphens varies intentionally. Catalog records do not record hyphens for ISBNs, making conversion from catalog record to TEI header difficult if you have to insert hyphens.