Extracting ISBNs from RSS feeds, web pages, or anywhere really

[Owen Stephens]

ISBNs are by no means a perfect identifier for books - but they are widely used, and so it is often useful to be able to grab an ISBN from one place, and pass it to another (e.g. extract and ISBN from a web page, and then use it to do a search on a library catalogue). Post recipes for extracting ISBNs here.

[Edith Speller]

Don't suppose it has anything for ISMN (Music rather than Book numbers) does it? The good thing is ISMN13 is a subset of ISBN13 so can be treated the same way, but old ISMNs all start with M which I imagine screws things up somewhat. The potential for mashing with ISMNs is probably more limited anyway, so it's a moot point!

[Owen Stephens]

Can you point at something that defines the format for an ISMN?

In terms of mash potential - apart from library catalogues, are there any other places we could expect to find ISMNs in the wild?