On Wed, Dec 10, 2014 at 2:39 PM, David Rissenberg <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hi, > > > > I’m a developer and have been asked to put a function into an application > which would return bibliographic data using an OCLC number (ISBN might also > work). The end purpose of this would be to create a bibliography for users > with citations in MLA style. I’m looking for the most direct way of > accomplishing this and it looks as though the Open Library API can do it > but confirmation (or other suggestions) would be most welcome. The users > are advanced humanities scholars so I imagine some of the items might be a > bit obscure. >
It's not OpenLibrary's API, but since you mentioned OCLC numbers the OCLC xID service might barely work for your needs for constructing MLA citations, although starting from an OCLC number it seems to take two hops; ISBN would be more direct. Starting with OCLC number 154684429: curl ' http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/oclcnum/154684429?method=getMetadata&format=json&fl=* ' returns: { "stat":"ok", "list":[{ "isbn":["9780596515218", "9780596529260"], "owi":["owi67201841"], "oclcnum":["154684429"] }] } Then you can take one of the returned ISBNs and request that: curl ' http://xisbn.worldcat.org/webservices/xid/isbn/9780596529260?method=getMetadata&format=json&fl=* ' which returns: { "stat":"ok", "list":[{ "url":["http://www.worldcat.org/oclc/154684429?referer=xid";], "publisher":"O'Reilly", "form":["BC"], "lccn":["2007278140"], "lang":"eng", "city":"Sebastopol, Calif.", "author":"Leonard Richardson and Sam Ruby.", "ed":"1st ed.", "year":"2007", "isbn":["9780596529260"], "title":"RESTful web services", "oclcnum":["154684429", "234290815", ... } This is straight from the docs at http://www.oclc.org/developer/develop/web-services/xid-api/xstandardNumber-resource.en.html With the OpenLibrary API, searching on OCLC numbers is going to be more hit or miss; I'd suggest going with ISBN if you have them. curl ' https://openlibrary.org/api/books?bibkeys=ISBN:9780596529260&format=json&jscmd=data ' returns much richer data than you get from OCLC, too much to bother pasting here. See the OpenLibrary API docs at https://openlibrary.org/dev/docs/api/books for more info.
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