Abstract:
The International Standard Book Number (ISBN) is a code that uniquely identifies
all books published internationally. Currently ISBN-13 has been in use since
the year 2007 as an improvement to ISBN-10. In this research the error detection
and correction capabilities of both ISBN-10 and ISBN-13 codes against the total
number of code words that can be generated is analysed. It is shown that both
codes have major weaknesses as far as these properties are concerned. The ISBN
-16 code then is designed and analysed as an improvement to the existing code.
Comparison to the existing code is done and a conversion tool for the existing
ISBN -13 to ISBN -16 developed. It is shown that the ISBN -16 code surpasses
the existing code in error detection and correction capabilities and the overall
dictionary.