The nice thing about OCLC's xISBN is that they have the ability to produce a URL that does a direct search for the entire set of ISBNs against a catalog - or, if the catalog doesn't support that - constructs a frame that lists the ISBNs sorted by decreasing frequency and allows the users to click and find a successful ISBN.
In addition, OCLC keeps a database that maps a URN for a library to its catalog url/type and version to ensure that the correct multi-ISBN search URL/frame is produced. It isn't widely used, but the libraries that do use it can be sure that xISBN will work even as catalogs change location and/or version. These two features, especially the first, are crucial for integrating xISBN in tools such as LibX. LibX could use the XML interface as well, but I don't see us doing anything more than what OCLC already gives us, so why bother. Does thingISBN provide these additional services as well? - Godmar On 6/14/06, Tim Spalding <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I'm sure many of you are already familiar with OCLC's xISBN service. Today I released "thingISBN," LibraryThing's "answer" to xISBN. Where xISBN uses OCLC's FRBRized data, thingISBN uses LibraryThing's "everyone a librarian" wiki-like cataloging. The results are pretty interesting, I think. xISBN has better coverage and I suspect makes fewer mistakes, but thingISBN is strong on paperbacks and non-US editions. There's a way of asking it to compare the two, so you can evaluate it yourself. Like xISBN, it's free for non-commercial use. It follows the xISBN XML format, so it can be plugged into existing code quite easily. I'm interested to see if anyone does anything interesting with it. I blog about the service here http://www.librarything.com/thingology/2006/06/introducing-thingisbn_14.php Comments, of course, appreciated. And for what it's worth I'm still looking for a crackerjack library programmer... Tim LibraryThing.com
