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 market99990-99999 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
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
+Example - encoding 52495 Start 5 (G) Separator 2 (L) Separator 4 (G) Separator 9 (L) Separator 5 (L)
References NACS Codes Barcode Reference - Section 6.1.46.2 Barcode Writer - The basis for the barcode structure U.P.C. Symbol Specification Manual - Appendix D - Two-Character and Five-Character to UPC symbol.