EAN-5

An ISBN with an EAN-5 addon (rightmost bars) representing US$44.95.

The EAN-5 is a 5-digit European Article Number code, and is a supplement to the EAN-13 barcode used on books. It is used to give a suggestion for the price of the book.

First Digit Description
5 $ US
6 $ Canada
4 $ New Zealand
3 $ Australia
0 & 1 British pounds

ISBN Encoding – Country and Currency Values Description

Value Definition
50000 NACS Trade
59999 Price for $100 and more
90000 NACS New
90000-98999 For internal purposes (BISG recommend 90000 if no price is given)
99000-99989 Reserved for the industry market
99990-99999 Reserved for National Association of College Stores (NACS)
99990 NACS used
99991 NACS copies

Encoding

The Encoding of EAN-5 characters is very similar to that of the other European Article Numbers. The only difference is that the digits are separated by 01. The EAN-5 always begins with '01011.' Also, the R-Code is not used.

Encoding of the digits
Digit L-code G-code
0 0001101 0100111
1 0011001 0110011
2 0010011 0011011
3 0111101 0100001
4 0100011 0011101
5 0110001 0111001
6 0101111 0000101
7 0111011 0010001
8 0110111 0001001
9 0001011 0010111

The structure of the barcode is based on the checksum. In order to compute the checksum, multiply each of the digits by either 3 or 9, alternating each time. Then add them and then do a mod 10. So the checksum for 05415 MN is 1 based on the following calculations: 

    0*3=0
    5*9=45
    4*3=12
    1*9=9
    5*3=15
  ----------
     81     %    10  = 1

Once you have the checksum digit, you can look up the structure in the following table. Note that the checksum digit is not in the final 5 digits, and is not intended to validate the 5 digit data, but rather to validate the reading of the EAN-5 overall.

Structure of EAN-5
Checksum Structure
0 GGLLL
1 GLGLL
2 GLLGL
3 GLLLG
4 LGGLL
5 LLGGL
6 LLLGG
7 LGLGL
8 LGLLG
9 LLGLG
Example - encoding 52495
Start 5 (G) Separator 2 (L) Separator 4 (G) Separator 9 (L) Separator 5 (L)
01011 0111001 01 0010011 01 0011101 01 0001011 01 0110001

References