I run a python script that does title lookups using the Open Library API. I think I'm using the deprecated verison of the API for the title look up but it works so I use it. The initial lookup returns a list of identifiers. My code then steps through those to retrieve the Open Library citations that match the identifiers.
Here is an example of a citation that has been enhanced with links to related editions available in scanned form on the Internet Archive http://www.library.nps.gov/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?DB=local&BOOL1=all+of+these&FLD1=Keyword+Anywhere+(GKEY)&CNT=25+records+per+page&SAB1=NPSPARKINDE3842 I've included a bit more technical detail below. I've been exploring the Open Office database software as an alternative to MS Access but have not yet figured out ODBC connectivity to it. Basically the script shells out from an MS Access application that I've made for my own use for review of new citations that get added to the National Park Service online catalog. I have an MS Access table with normalized titles of books being added, an example would be: PICTORIAL HISTORY OF THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION WITH A SKETCH OF THE EARLY HISTORY OF THE COUNTRY If the title in question is for a pre 1922 publication I click a button on an MS Access form which uses a current numeric identifier as a parameter to the python script, which then retrieves the title from the MS Access table via a lookup that uses the python pyodbc library. cnxn = pyodbc.connect('DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)} ;DBQ=c:\\ProciteLoads\INDE2.mdb;SERVER=localhost;DATABASE=testdb;UID=me;PWD=pass') cursor = cnxn.cursor() cursor.execute("select SeqNum, title from MatchesAid where seqnum=" + sys.argv[1]) My code then shortens the title to whatever precedes any embedded punctuation and replaces spaces with "+" It then queries the Open Library with data = urllib.urlopen('http://openlibrary.org/api/search?q={"query":";' + s + '"}&has_fulltext=1').read() where s would be something like "PICTORIAL+HISTORY+OF+THE+AMERICAN+REVOLUTION+WITH+A+SKETCH+OF+THE+EARLY+HISTORY+OF+THE+COUNTRY" The initial result is a list of identifiers. My python code then does a follow up using these values to retrieve actual citations with links. data2 = urllib.urlopen('http://openlibrary.org/api/books?bibkeys='+ s + '&jscmd=data&format=json').read() where in this case the variable s would look like "OLID:OL6918977M" I can then easily dereference the json format results with code that looks like this: if 'ebooks' in cite[s]: cite=eval(data2) sTitle=cite[s]['title'] and so on to get: The pictorial history of the American revolution New York R. Sears 1856 http://www.archive.org/details/pictorialhistory01sear http://openlibrary.org/books/OL6561307M/The_pictorial_history_of_the_American_revolution The above values then get recorded in another MS Access table as fields that I call TITLE, PLACE, PUBLISHER, PUBDATE, IAURL, OLURL I then evaluate the somewhat fuzzy results of the title search and construct and embed links in our NPS citations. The Open Library indexing system does a nice job providing fairly good results which seem to have the right amount of "fuzziness" so I don't get many false matches and I do get related editions and some related works. Richard Aroksaar NPS Voyager System Administrator 206-220-4252 206-612-2006 (cell) George Oates <[email protected]> Sent by: To ol-tech-bounces@a Open Library -- technical rchive.org discussion <[email protected]> cc 03/07/2011 11:21 Subject AM [ol-tech] Use of Open Library API? Collecting examples... Please respond to Open Library -- technical discussion <ol-tech@archive. org> Hi all, I'm writing to request some information from you... we don't specifically track external use of the Open Library API or data, but we're interested to know who is using us and how. If you have used the API or covers or are showing OL data on your site, would you be so kind as to reply to the list (or to me separately if you prefer) with links and/or any interesting background information you think is relevant? Thank you! george _______________________________________________ Ol-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected] _______________________________________________ Ol-tech mailing list [email protected] http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-tech To unsubscribe from this mailing list, send email to [email protected]
