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BootCamp Session on Software Access to Bib Data?
October 5th, 2010
As someone who works for the largest library cooperative in the world, and a THATCamp sponsor (OCLC), I’d be happy to do a session on how anyone can search our database of over 200 million book and serial records for items in libraries around the world and get the data back in RSS and Atom XML formats for mashing up. This might tie in well with Raymond Yee’s suggested mashup session, either as an example or as a follow-on. Raymond and I go way back.
This same service can also return HTML-formatted citations in all the major citation formats, so users of your local service can simply copy and paste the text into their paper.
We call it the WorldCat Basic API, and it is a machine view of WorldCat.org but without the journal articles (contractual obligations prevent us from making the journal article data available). I will have handouts on it if anyone is interested.
I will also be happy to find out how libraries can better serve the needs of tech-savvy humanists, which I can take back to OCLC Research where I work. With about 50 research scientists, program officers, and software engineers, we are the closest thing there is to a library Xerox PARC.
test Filed under BootCamp, Sessions | Comments (4)4 Responses to “BootCamp Session on Software Access to Bib Data?”
I’d gladly participate in a Bootcamp about bibliographic data with Roy — that sounds like a lot of fun and a topic that interests me a lot.
Same here: would love to participate.
+1, interesting resource I wasn’t previously aware of.
Sounds great great great. Have been using WorldCat as an authority guide for some time but the ability to pull records has been limited to LoC over Z39.50!