ISTC

From The Big Picture Wiki

ISTC – International Standard Text Code

The ISTC is an ISO standard that was developed to identify textual works.

It differs from an ISBN in that it identifies the intellectual property that could be manifested in any number of ISBNs. For example, the book “Moby Dick, Or the Whale” would be identified with an ISTC; the Bantam edition, the Barnes & Noble edition, the Signet edition, the Norton Critical edition would each be assigned a different ISBN.

However, ISTCs are not limited to books. They can be assigned to poems, articles, essays, short stories – any written work. So an ISTC can identify the poem “Lady Lazarus” by Sylvia Plath, and another ISTC can identify the collection “Ariel” in which it appears. A third ISTC can identify the unedited “Ariel” collection that includes poems the original publication did not.

The ISTC is assigned at the “expression” level. That is, each time a new expression of the original intellectual property is derived, a new ISTC is required. Thus the screenplay for the movie version of “Moby Dick” would receive a new ISTC. The children’s version of “Moby Dick” would also receive a new ISTC.

The usefulness of the ISTC is pretty much this: All the iterations (items and manifestations) of a work can be tracked for royalty purposes, for search purposes, and for metadata purposes. Imagine typing “Moby Dick” into a search box and getting a comprehensive list of all ISBNs relating to “Moby Dick”; imagine being able to remit royalties to publishers without tracking down this edition or that one; imagine having all the relevant metadata about “Moby Dick” permeate seamlessly to the ISBN level without double-keying anything.

ISTC consortium consists of R. R. Bowker, CISAC (International Confederation of Authors and Composers Societies), and Nielsen Bookdata. As a practical standard, the ISTC has not yet been implemented – the costs of creating a registry system are significant. But it is moving along, and when it does finally come down the pike, there are numerous organizations that will be quite grateful.

--Ljnd 12:59, 11 June 2007 (EDT)