Why is my library card number so damn long?

[Bill McBlueState]

Here's what I don't get. A library account number at UMass is fifteen digits long. If I want to check my borrowing record online, I need to enter fifteen digits. Why so many?

With fifteen digits, there are 10,000 TRILLION unique account numbers. That's enough numbers to give everyone on the planet over a million different library accounts. Yet, there are only about 50,000 people who have UMass library cards. UMass *is* trying to attract more out of state students. Maybe the library is putting more faith in that plan than the rest of us?

Well, at least with that many possibilities, the chances of someone accessing my library record is vanishingly small. I guess that's good; I wouldn't want anyone to know that I'm the one who's been hoarding Protostars and Planets IV for the last year and a half.

\rant

[MADem]

1. Everyone else has short numbers

But because you are a liberal blue stater, you have been assigned a special number, one given only to agitators, so the government can track what you take out of the library, and use it against you one day when you are rounded up as a traitor to the motherland!

Feel better???

[Bill McBlueState]

2. I guarantee you

Karl Rove has people working for him who can make a convincing case to a tribunal that "The Observation and Analysis of Stellar Photospheres" is a terrorist training manual.

[DS1]

3. I'll tell you why

Take the last 7 digits of your number. Strip off the last digit, that's your checksum, the remaining six is your actual card number, the rest is for statewide governmental stuff ( the UMASS and Minuteman library network, if you want to be specific) , and makes the rest of the digits match up to an algorithm much like any other credit card number.