Examples of types of monographic publications to which an ISBN shall be assigned are:
- Printed books and pamphlets
- Braille publications
- Publications that are not intended by the publisher to be updated regularly or continued indefinitely
- Individual articles or issues of a particular continuing resource (but not the continuing resource in its entirety)
- Maps
- Educational/instructional films, videos and transparencies
- Audiobooks on cassette, or CD, or DVD (talking books)
- Electronic publications either on physical carriers (such as machine-readable tapes, diskettes, or CD-ROMs) or on the Internet (for download or streaming)
- Digitised copies of printed monographic publications
- Microform publications
- Educational or instructional software
- Mixed media publications (where the principal constituent is text-based)