I agree with Bryan's caution against relying on publisher's use of 
ISBNs.  You can't even rely on the ebook having an ISBN different from 
that used by the print edition (or one of the print editions).

There is nothing like ISSN-L for ISBNs.  You could use the "What Work?" 
LibraryThing API:

http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/LibraryThing_APIs

--Kevin

On 2:59 PM, Joel Marchesoni wrote:
> I like the idea of a master ISBN (one number to rule them all? Sorry, too easy) but I think failing that I'd stick with the Ebook's ISBN. Any search on it will give a user the title and author of the work. Plus, it gives you a unique number for each item.
>
> Joel
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Lackhoff
> Sent: Wednesday, May 22, 2013 02:30
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Minimal bibliographic record as filename
>
> On 21.05.2013 20:14 Eric Lease Morgan wrote:
>
>> The convention I have always used included the first word of the author's last name, the first (non-stop) word of the title, and an integer (accession number):
>>
>>    plato-republic-105.epub
>
> It has the advantage of being short but I would like a bit more info, at least publication year and a longer part of the title and the/a ISBN.
> Perhaps I will just make something up myself.
>
> Since I would also like to include the ISBN, is there such a thing like a "main" or "master" ISBN in case a work has more than one of them? I am looking for something like the ISSN-L, but of course for books instead of journals. Something like the reverse of the xISBN service: 'many to one' instead of 'one to many'.
> If there is nothing like that I might just use the first one given in the book.
>
> -Michael