ON SOME PROPERTIES AND LIMITATIONS IN THE ISBN-13 CODE

Abstract

The International Standard Book Number system-13 (ISBN-13 ) is a thirteen digit code which uniquely identifies every book pub lished internationally. The code was formed as an improvement to the ISBN-10 code whic h could detect and correct some errors but could generate fewer code words t hus the great need for expansion. This paper highlights some properties, discuss es major limitations and shows the error detection and correction capabilities in th e code versus the effect the total number of code words that the code can generate.