I would second the prudence of taking advantage of wheels already invented if you can.
One thing I missed, though, in the earlier parts of this thread was why you wanted to use Dewey, Tom? Depending on the nature of the items in the collection, you may be better off going with LC classification. There could be more readily available complete copy bearing LC numbers and no Dewey numbers. Going LC would avoid any potential need to later manually tweak the Dewey numbers you get from LC (a possibility you mentioned) - or the complete disruption should a new edition of Dewey revise substantially your area... Jonathan LeBreton Senior Associate University Librarian Editor: Library & Archival Security Temple University Libraries Paley M138, 1210 Polett Walk, Philadelphia PA 19122 voice: 215.204.8231 fax: 215.204.5201 mobile: 215.284.5070 email: [email protected] email: [email protected] -----Original Message----- From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Joe Hourcle Sent: Monday, August 11, 2014 10:27 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Dewey code On Aug 8, 2014, at 10:13 PM, Riley Childs wrote: > Ok, so you want to access LC data to get Dewey decimal numbers? You need to > use a z39.50 client to pull the record, you can do it with marc edit but it > is labor intensive. You would need to roll your own solution for this or use > classify.oclc.org to get book info (this doesn't give you API access). Your > best bet is classify.oclc.org. > > That aside: > Honestly you might be better off running with something like Koha, writing a > home brew library system is no cake walk, trust me I know from 2 years of > experience trying to code one and ultimately moving to koha. Koha can be run > on a VPS (Digital Ocean is what i would use) or on an old PC in the corner. I > am in a situation similar to yours if you want to contact me off list I can > give you some advice. I 100% agree -- you'd be better off going with something intended for personal libraries (eg Delicious Library) and give it a dedicated machine before trying to roll your own. oss4lib hasn't been updated in a while, but Lyrasis is maintaining foss4lib.org as a catalog of free & open source library software, and has a 'ILS feature comparison tool' which lists feature differences between Koha and Evergreen: http://ils.foss4lib.org/ -Joe
