Let’s say you have a textbook or a novel you need to find; how do you search for it? You use its ISBN. You can use ISBNs to search for books and book-related information online. But where exactly do you do this search?
The simple answer? You use an ISBN database. With an ISBN database, you can search for books and essential information, e.g., price, author, book review, etc., using the ISBN. This article discusses the top 5 ISBN databases to check out in 2023.
ISBNdb
We kick off this list with the oldest database on our list. ISBNdb, founded in 2002, contains an API that grants you access to a plethora of book information. At the same time, you can browse this data by categories and find prices from various retailers.
The catch here is that users don’t get a free ride. You have to pick from 3 different subscription plans. However, you do get your money’s worth. With 32 million+ book titles, guaranteed daily updates, and 19 data points for each book, ISBNdb is well worthy of a place on this list.
Amazon Books
Everyone’s heard of Amazon, but only some know how vast and valuable its ISBN database is. For starters, the API allows you to search books online using just the ISBN. You can also input other details and instantly verify the authenticity of any book before buying.
Amazon Books’ database also comes at a price but not in the cash sense. Instead, you must register as an Amazon affiliate partner to enjoy its database.
WorldCat
We’ve gone from the oldest to the most popular, and now we talk about the largest. With the WorldCat, you’re connected to a database of tens of thousands of libraries. Also, records of these libraries are made available on the WorldCat Search API.
In addition, you get access to books in multiple languages other than English and other media forms.
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Bowker
Bowker is the 6-letter-word answer to the world’s leading authority for bibliographic and publisher information. Here, you can find extensive data on books that you can search for using the ISBN codes. Also, the book data aggregation provided by Bowker is a handy tool for readers looking for everything related to a book.
Finally, Bowker grants organizations the opportunity to access raw data via their software. This is possible after acquiring a Raw Data License.
Open Library
The last entry on this list comes with one perk we’re sure you’ll like – it’s free to use. As a nonprofit setup from the Internet Archive, Open Library provides a flexible book catalog intending to build a database for all books known to man. Pretty ambitious for an ISBN database.
Well, there are pretty close, anyway. Twenty million titles are already available, and information has been gathered from various catalogs to keep the database updated.
Wrapping Up
With these many options available, searching for a suitable ISBN database is hassle-free. In the end, you can use the database listed above to search for all book-related information easily and quickly.
