citing: isbn changing; year of first and year of later edition

michaa7

Hi, thanks for providing zotero. It's new to me but I like it already.

But I encountered two problems when I entered (via magic stick) some books:

1) isbn changing
Its a bit surprising (and in my opinion prone for errors) if I enter "3-8252-1512-1" and in the output it silently changes to "978-3-8252-1512-5". (This is only one example of a few!)

It shows the right title and author, but not the right year and edition.

If zotero "knows" that one isbn became (for what reason? Most likely due to a new edition, but I don't know)) an other isbn it shouldn't do this change *silently*.

Yes, I can edit it, and I *have to*, as otherwise my citation points to a *wrong* edition.

So my question is: should zotero not stick to the isbn the user entered (or at least it should give a visual hint for example by changing the isbn colour to red)?


2) partly related to 1): year
What year? First print or year of the edition on hand? As I'd prefer to cite with both like Milano 1977, Heidelberg 2003 I wonder whether there is a way to achive this. But I guess it would be neccessary to distinguish these years whithin my (zoteros) bibliogaphic database.


Thanks for your attention.

aborel

1) 978-3-8252-1512-5 is exactly the same as 3-8252-1512-1, using the 13-digits convention instead of the 10-digits convention. Both are often listed on library records, so I suppose Zotero is picking up the first one listed on the record it found.
Not a big deal, but indeed it would be nice to stay with the version entered by the user.

2) Use the year for the edition you actually use: it's written inside. If you found metadata for a slightly different edition, you can adjust manually - the exact metadata for your edition isn't always available from locations Zotero is able to access.

michaa7

"1) 978-3-8252-1512-5 is exactly the same as 3-8252-1512-1 ... "

No, it's not the same because it is not only "the 13-digits convention instead of the 10-digits convention". It's the trailing -5 vs. -1 , too. And I had examples with more differences, too.


2) Sure I will use the year for the edition I use. But I still liked to add the year for the first edition.

bwiernik

1) You’re mistaken. The last digit of an ISBN is a check digit—it varies based on all of the digits that precede it and is used by computers to verify information was transmitted correctly. They are not usually the same for the 10 and 13 digit codes for the same book and edition.

michaa7

Thanks for this clarification. I did't know.