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prominos-lexx-playground [2025/02/05 22:51] – [A primer on barcodes] prominosprominos-lexx-playground [2025/05/04 04:09] (current) – prominos
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 and many more and many more
  
-===== How this guide is structured =====+===== How is this guide structured? =====
  
 This guide will first cover topics that are universal to any cataloging effort regardless of what is being cataloged. This will cover topics such as how to read and interpret UPC barcodes. This guide will first cover topics that are universal to any cataloging effort regardless of what is being cataloged. This will cover topics such as how to read and interpret UPC barcodes.
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   * They are not always present. Not every companies adopted barcodes at the same time, in my experience with video game products, vintage and retro video games that came out before the 1990's have good chances to be lacking a barcode. Additionally, products that are part of a bundle or were not sold for retail, like contest prizes, development tools, display cases etc also often lack a barcode.   * They are not always present. Not every companies adopted barcodes at the same time, in my experience with video game products, vintage and retro video games that came out before the 1990's have good chances to be lacking a barcode. Additionally, products that are part of a bundle or were not sold for retail, like contest prizes, development tools, display cases etc also often lack a barcode.
-  * While barcodes are a good way to identify different products in a cataloging project, they almost never identify packaging (cover and boxes), art revision or sometimes even different language boxes/covers and/or editions uniquely. If we're striving to catalog every variations/correction to a product packaging then we can't rely solely on barcodes. + 
 +  * While barcodes are a good way to identify different products in a cataloging project, they almost never uniquely identify packaging (cover and boxes), art revision or sometimes even different language boxes/covers and/or editions. If we're striving to catalog every variations/correction to a product packaging then we can't rely solely on barcodes. 
  
 In the next section, I will introduce the most important format of barcodes you should know when cataloging video games. I won't go over every single format in existence my focus will mainly be on what you'll encounter when looking at video game products. In the next section, I will introduce the most important format of barcodes you should know when cataloging video games. I won't go over every single format in existence my focus will mainly be on what you'll encounter when looking at video game products.
  
 === International Article Number AKA EAN (European Article Number) === === International Article Number AKA EAN (European Article Number) ===
-{{:ean.jpg?400|}}+{{:ean2.jpg?400|}}{{:ean_guards.jpg?400|}}
  
 You will find this format of barcode mostly on products that are sold outside of North America and Japan. You will find this format of barcode mostly on products that are sold outside of North America and Japan.
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    * 6: This is the check digit, I won't go into the detail of how it is calculated but just know that its value depends on the 12 previous digits.    * 6: This is the check digit, I won't go into the detail of how it is calculated but just know that its value depends on the 12 previous digits.
 +
 +One last thing to mention is that you might runs into EAN barcodes that ends with a ">" (greater than) symbol (see the image above). This is called a guard mark and it is not part of the barcode per se, it is just used to help barcode readers read it properly. I have also heard that some barcodes can start with "<" (lesser than) this also works in the same way and is not considered part of the barcode so you can safely omit them when cataloging. 
 +
 +=== Universal Product Code (UPC) ===
 +{{::upc-a.jpg?400|}}
 +
 +You'll mostly see these in North America. They were the first version of the barcode to be used en masse and it originated in the United States. They work the exact same way as the EAN but the company prefix is 6 digits long instead of 7. You can easily convert a UPC to EAN by prepending a 0 to the UPC (this has no impact on the check digit). You'll notice that visually the check digit is shown separated from the product code contrary to the EAN where the check digit is grouped with the product code. What I've shown here is a UPC-A format, there are other UPC formats but I haven't seen them used with video game products.
 +
 +  * 04: With UPC-A you can consider that there's always an implicit 0 at the start so this is really a country code of 004. Since the first number is always a 0 that implies that the country code always indicate the United States given that GS1 country codes between 000 to 099 are either assigned to the USA, are reserved or have some other special meanings.
 +
 +  * 5496: This company prefix is assigned to Nintendo. We usually refer to it including the country code (without the implicit 0) so 045496.
 +
 +  * 59043: This is the product code that Nintendo assigned to the Legend of Zelda - Breath of the Wild, Canadian version on Nintendo Switch (remember barcode country code is not necessarily equal to place of sale). .
 +
 +  * 7: This is the check digit, it serves the same purpose as described above in the EAN section.
 +
 +=== Japanese Article Number (JAN) ===
 +
 +{{:jan_t_prefix.jpg?400|}} {{:jan_modern.jpg?400|}}
 +
 +The Japanese Article number barcodes are those used in Japan and are governed by GS1 Japan. For all intent and purposes they are identical to European EANs and that they start with 450 to 459 or 490 to 499. With that said it is worth mentioning that you will probably come across barcodes with no spacing between numbers at all, especially while looking at older items. These barcodes also sometimes starts with a "T", before barcodes were introduced in Japan some point of sale (PoS) systems used optical character recognition (OCS) that is, they read actual human readable letters and numbers instead of bars, that "T" simply tells the OCS reader that the code that follows is to be read as a JAN code, therefore, this OCR "T" prefix can safely be ignored when cataloging.
 +
 +=== International Standard Book Number (ISBN) ===
 +
 +The international standard book number is a international system to uniquely track and identify books published all over the world. You might be thinking "what does that have to do with games?", well it seems like some publishers actually gave ISBNs to their games along with a UPC/EAN/JAN, I don't know why this is the case but it actually happens. It is also useful to have a good understanding of the system in order to catalog books that are gaming related like strategy guides for example. Here's an example of a game that was given an ISBN code:
 +
 +{{:isbn_game.jpg?400|}}
 +
 +There are two formats of ISBNs. ISBN-10 are 10 digits long and were assigned before 2007 the game above uses this format. ISBN-13 are 13 digits long and are assigned to publication from 2007 onward. They also double down as an EAN code (notice how they are equal in length).
 +
 +ISBN-10 are divided into 4 sections often (but not always) delimited by hyphens (-).
 +
 +1- A registration group: This is a variable length code representing either a country or a language group under which the registrant (publisher) is registered. You will often see 0 or 1 which are the English language registration group, it is not tied to a country rather it is for any English language publication. 2 is the French language registration group, 3 is German and 5 is Russian. 
 +
 +You will also see registration groups that are tied to a country or region, for example: 4 is Japan, 7 is Mainland China, 89 is South Korea, 626, 957 and 986 are Taiwan and 962 and 988 are Hong Kong.
 +
 +2- A registrant (aka publisher): This is also of variable length and is assigned to a registrant by whatever organization is in charge of the registration group. The less digits is assigned to the registrant the bigger publisher the registrant is because that leaves more digits for publication number. If a registrant runs out of digits for publications it can request an additional registrant number, therefore the same publisher can have multiple different registrant numbers. It is similar to the company prefix in UPC/EAN/JAN
 +
 +3- A publication number: This is yet again a variable length number. The more digits form this number the bigger the publisher, the less digits the smaller. This uniquely identify a publication (book or game) published by the registrant. It is similar to the product code in UPC/EAN/JAN.  
 +
 +4- A check digit: A single digit used to detect errors in the code. This is similar to the check digit in UPC/EAN/JAN. Note that for ISBN-10 this number is base 11, that is, there are 11 symbols/characters that can be used to represent a single digit, 0 to 9 are used as usual but 10 is represented by the letter "X" don't be alarmed if you see an ISBN-10 ending with an "X".
 +
 +Now let's use this knowledge to decode the ISBN in the picture above. ISBN 1-56673-054-6: 
 +
 +  * 1 is the English Language registration Group, indeed the game cover is in English.
 +  * 56673: Searching for 1-56673 on isbn-international.org we get 978-1-56673 = Sony Electronic Publishing Company, sure enough the game is published by Sony Imagesoft (more details about the 978 prefix in the ISBN-13 section)
 +
 +{{:sony-isbn.jpg?400|}}
 +
 +  * 054: This is the 55th item published under the 56673 Sony registrant code. Notice that this is 3 digits long so Sony can publish up to 1000 books/games (from 000 to 999) under that 56673 code.
 +  * 6: This is the check digit, how it is calculated is out of scope of this guide.
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