I think we have a catch-22 here. You need an OCLC developer license to
use WC to "discover" WC URIs using an application; you need WC URIs (or
other URIs that are not very diffuse on the Web) to make use of the OCLC
linked data. The OCLC linked data is ODC-BY for anyone wishing to use
the data, but, if I'm not mistaken, the APIs are not publicly open to
the Web public. Thus the schema.org data is ODC-BY but most applications
on the web will have little opportunity to discover the OCLC-specific
URIs. So the gatekeeper is the API access, that is, the ability to
search WC for URI discovery (e.g. with an author's name). So you can
link, but you can't easily discover the linking URIs.
I suppose that one could discover publications as linked data using the
topical access of LCSH, the VIAF links in Wikipedia, or by going through
databases like Open Library, which has some OCLC numbers associated with
bibliographic data. All of these are accessible via open APIs, I
believe, and are linked DBPedia. I understand that "linking is linking"
but unless we are developing data for SkyNet, somewhere along the way
the user needs to begin with a human-understandable query. Searching and
linked data are not in conflict with each other, they give each other
mutual support. It only makes sense that URIs will be discovered through
searching at some point in the process of access, as applications like
Wikipedia illustrate. (As does the Facebook API, which is a search.)
I've tried to find a clear statement of who can get access to the OCLC
APIs, but I'm afraid that I can't find a page that clarifies that. I
guess one is expected to apply for developer key in order to find out if
they qualify. I'll pass that information along.
kc
On 7/10/12 2:32 PM, Kevin Ford wrote:
Does the worldcat search api return the data as described with the
schema.org and OCLC extension vocabularies?
The use case mentioned extracting the RDFa data from those pages.
Without knowing the answer to the leading question above, the mock
solution addressed that condition. If one simply wanted "to create a
comprehensive bibliography of works" by a particular author, then,
yes, the search response would suffice.
Kevin
On 07/10/2012 05:10 PM, Roy Tennant wrote:
Uh...what? For the given use case you would be much better off simply
using the WorldCat Search API response. Using it only to retrieve an
identifier and then going and scraping the Linked Data out of a
WorldCat.org page is, at best, redundant.
As Richard pointed out, some use cases -- like the one Karen provided
-- are not really a good use case for linked data. It's a better use
case for an API, which has been available for years.
Roy
On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 2:08 PM, Kevin Ford <[email protected]> wrote:
The use case clarifies perfectly.
Totally feasible. Well, I should say "totally feasible" with the
caveat
that I've never used the Worldcat Search API. Not letting that stop
me, so
long as it is what I imagine it is, then a developer should be able to
perform a search, retrieve the response, and, by integrating one of the
tools advertised on the schema.org website into his/her code, then
retrieve
the microdata for each resource returned from the search (and save
it as RDF
or whatever).
If someone has created something like this, do speak up.
Yours,
Kevin
On 07/10/2012 04:48 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
Kevin, if you misunderstand then I undoubtedly haven't been clear
(let's
at least share the confusion :-)). Here's the use case:
PersonA wants to create a comprehensive bibliography of works by
AuthorB. The goal is to do a search on AuthorB in WorldCat and extract
the RDFa data from those pages in order to populate the bibliography.
Apart from all of the issues of getting a perfect match on authors and
of manifestation duplicates (there would need to be editing of the
results after retrieval at the user's end), how feasible is this?
Assume
that the author is prolific enough that one wouldn't want to look
up all
of the records by hand.
kc
On 7/10/12 1:43 PM, Kevin Ford wrote:
As for someone who might want to do this programmatically, he/she
should take a look at the "Programming languages" section of the
second link I sent along:
http://schema.rdfs.org/tools.html
There one can find Ruby, Python, and Java extractors and parsers
capable of outputting RDF. A developer can take one of these and
programmatically get at the data.
Apologies if I am misunderstanding your intent.
Yours,
Kevin
On 07/10/2012 04:34 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
Thanks, Kevin! And Richard!
I'm thinking we need a good web site with links to tools. I had
already
been introduced to
http://www.w3.org/2012/pyRdfa/
where you can past a URI and get ttl or rdf/xml. These are all good
resources. But what about someone who wants to do this
programmatically,
not through a web site? Richard's message indicates that this
isn't yet
available, so perhaps we should be gathering use cases to support
the
need? And have a place to post various solutions, even ones that
are not
OCLC-specific? (Because I am hoping that the use of microformats
will
increase in general.)
kc
On 7/10/12 12:12 PM, Kevin Ford wrote:
is there an open search to get one to the desired records in the
first
place?
-- I'm not certain this will fully address your question, but try
these two sites:
Website: http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
Example: http://tinyurl.com/dx3h5bg
Website: http://linter.structured-data.org/
Example: http://tinyurl.com/bmm8bbc
These sites will extract the data, but I don't think you get your
choice of serialization. The data are extracted and displayed
on the
resulting page in the HTML, but at least you can *see* the data.
Additionally, there are a number of "tools" to help with microdata
extraction here:
http://schema.rdfs.org/tools.html
Some of these will allow you to output specific (RDF)
serializations.
HTH,
Kevin
On 07/10/2012 02:42 PM, Karen Coyle wrote:
I have demonstrated the schema.org/RDFa microdata in the WC
database to
various folks and the question always is: how do I get access
to this?
(The only source I have is the Facebook API, me being a "user"
rather
than a "maker".) The microdata is CC-BY once you get a Worldcat
URI, but
is there an open search to get one to the desired records in
the first
place? I'm poorly-versed in WC APIs so I'm hoping others have a
better
grasp.
@rjw: the OCLC website does a thorough job of hiding email
addresses or
I would have asked this directly. Then again, a discussion here
could
have added value.
Thanks,
kc
--
Karen Coyle
[email protected] http://kcoyle.net
ph: 1-510-540-7596
m: 1-510-435-8234
skype: kcoylenet
