Manual:ISBN

Mediawiki recognizes inline ISBNs; for example: the wikitext ISBN 0-12-345678-9 becomes ISBN 0-12-345678-9 (the dashes are optional), which corresponds to Special:Booksources/0123456789. This is a link to a special booksource page, the page Meta:Book sources with each instance of MAGICNUMBER on this page replaced with the ISBN (so a template with a parameter, but with a special syntax just for this application). It links to sites where one may search for the best price for the book or access information about the book such as reviews and reader reactions. It is important when making a link to not put a colon after "ISBN".

Some think that this is useful, as it allows readers to go to online stores and purchase books. However, ISBNs only identify a particular edition of a book, and the reader will not see the full range of versions of the book for sale. Most sites discourage using ISBNs alone to identify books: instead they suggest you add a proper citation as well as the ISBN.

Note that books before 1970 usually do not have an ISBN. A good place to get the numbers is the Library of Congress catalog.

The page name "Meta:Book sources" is configured in the "MediaWiki" name space, and can itself be in any name space. This is useful for installations that want it freely editable. If the page configured there does not exist, ISBN links are still generated and render a default page of links to book sources taken from the languageXXX.php file. Note that the URL for the page is always the same, it resides in the "Special" name space and its name is always "Booksources", no matter what the source is. Calling the page without an ISBN renders an ISBN entry form.

Further reading

• Wikipedia:ISBN, 2003-2005, by MyRedDice, Stephen Gilbert, and others

See also: Markup spec/BNF/Magic links#ISBN numbers