Topic 6: Glossary: Fingerprint

[Robert Maxwell]

>Fingerprint. A group of characters taken from the text of the publication,
>which, with the addition of an imprint date and an edition, impression,  %or
>other identifying number%,  may serve to identify the publication uniquely.

To display my ignorance: I have wondered about this ... does such a thing
exist? I understand ISBN, CODEN, ISSN, etc., but fingerprint? I have never
run across such an animal in working with any books, rare or not. Why do we
need to define this? Can it be left out?

Bob
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Robert L. Maxwell
Special Collections and Ancient Languages Cataloger
6428 Harold B. Lee Library
Brigham Young University
Provo, UT 84602
(801) 378-5568
robert_maxwell at byu.edu
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