Similar to the ISBN-handling, we should have ISWC-Numbers implemented in MediaWiki for e.g. AKM, GEMA SUISA, iswc.org, etc.
This suggestion was made by User:Schwijker at the German language edition of Wikipedia, see
http://de.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Verbesserungsvorschl%C3%A4ge&oldid=61668205#ISWC
We should add a lookup special page (similar to the ISBN lookup)
| Status | Subtype | Assigned | Task | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open | None | T21439 ISWC-Numbers | |||
| Open | Feature | None | T12867 Create Special:Sources and {{#sources:}} | ||
| Declined | None | T21427 implement ISWC numbers in MediaWiki |
Or more generally, use the universal "EAN" identifier for these (from the barcode printed on their boxes), because ISBN (for books), ASIN (for audio/video editions), because these numbers are now applications of the more general "EAN-13" international standard (in its current most widely used 13-digit version, which may be later extended to 16 digits or more) for identification of products (this EAN identifier does not identify a particular instance of these products, or the merchant selling or distributing it, EAN numbers are vendor-neutral).
Using "ISBN" or "ASIN" or "ISWC" however, is probably better than generic "EAN", because it allows easier identification of the product type (so this can help tune up the list of vendors for each product type, on which a specific product identified by this number can be looked for), also because their 10-digit formats are ambiguous between each other, unless they are converted to 13-digit using their 3-digit prefixe(s) that these related standards have allocated into the EAN number space.
Otherwise, the 13-digit number after the prefix "EAN" will have to be parsed to recognize the product type from a known list of numeric prefixes (this is perfectly possible, provided that the standards that allocated EAN numbers for their use are also publishing the list of EAN prefixes they asked for this usage).