Scanning bar codes

Whelekwet

Does anyone know why ISBN codes fail so often? I'm talking about when I scan a book bar code with the Zotero app on my iPhone. Probably half the time the result is FAILED, in red. Typing in the ISBN code doesn't help either. Are half of these codes actually useless?

adamsmith

Depends on the ISBNs. ISBNs don't have centralized metadata, so this depends on whether books are in catalogs of libraries with good query services. If you let us know some examples, we can say more.

Generally speaking, ISBNs for books published by established publishers in English, German or French should virtually always work, with the exception of *very* recent publications. Self-published books basically never work. Non-English books are hit or miss.