I’ve started adding OPDS/BookServer support to Open Library, starting with OL
Edition records. OPDS is an Atom-based specification for distribution of ebook
metadata. You can read more at http://opds-spec.org.
OPDS provides a good way of programmatically extracting and harvesting OL
edition data. Currently, the OPDS record contains more metadata than the JSON
version of an edition record, which makes it easy to grab author and subject
data without multiple requests.
For example, to get an author name for an OL edition using JSON, you would
first have to get the edition’s JSON record, find the work key, then request
the work’s JSON record, then find the author key, then request the author’s
JSON record, and then you would be able find the author name. The OPDS entry
for an edition will contain Work-level data, so you can avoid jumping through
hoops.
Also, for edition records added before Works were introduced in OL, the JSON
edition record sometimes shows author and subject data which is old and
sometimes incorrect!
For each edition record in OL, you can add “.odps” to the end of the edition
key to retrieve the OPDS version. For example the OPDS entry for this edition
of Peter Rabbit can be retrieved from
http://openlibrary.org/books/OL2102420M.opds
We are still discussing how to support external identifiers, indirect
acquisition, and DAISY links with the ODPS community, so the format of the OPDS
record might change slightly in the future.
-raj
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