ShmoopTube

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And here's your shmoop du jour brought to you by numerical literary

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coding systems because librarians live wild and crazy lives..alright check [librarian flys through the roof of a library]

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out the following passage alright..ISBN [mumbling] okay well the main idea of

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this passage is that an ISBN what? and here are the potential answers [mumbling]

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well ISBN's they may not be

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quite as exciting as ICBMs do you think but they're still pretty important and a [rocket moving in the air]

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whole lot less destructive. So according to this passage what's the main thing we

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ought to know about them let's take a look at option D we know that bar codes [Bar codes side by side]

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are very important just ask any supermarket clerk yeah ISBN's are

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frequently expressed as bar codes, but given that the passage doesn't make a [red laser scanning a passage of writing]

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single mention of the word bar code it's safe to assume they're not the main idea

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here alright well as for option C there is a single sentence in the passage that

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mentions privately published books flooded states that most privately

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published books eventually receive ISBN just like the mass-market books, but that [A private book titled with ISBN and numbers]

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doesn't really distinguish between them and anyway this is just a single detail

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within the passage, so it's out. option A isn't terrible but while ISBN are used

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in library cataloguing the passage points out other places they're used as [Man places a book in a library book shelf]

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well if you've ever downloaded a book on a Kindle you'll know that ISBN's aren't

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just for libraries the correct answer is B the first and last sentences of the

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passage highlight the main idea which is that ISBN's serve as unique identifiers

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for books there what less our computer systems know that we're downloading the [a series of zero's and one's in computer code]

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cat and a hat and not the cat with the gap a very different book next up on our

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list of dauntingly dry topics alphanumeric sorting future postmen and [Children wearing postmen outfits]

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postwomen this one's for you babies

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