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  •   almost 10 years ago

Library Data

Is there a central source for library data, or is it a scrape and bake kinda thing?

Thanks guys!

  • 3 comments

  • Manager   •   almost 10 years ago

    Hi Justin,

    New York Public Library will be providing some library data through their API.

  •   •   almost 10 years ago

    Thanks Jaimee, any idea if this API is already public and if it is, is there a link, or are we going to be working from a new API that we wont see until day of?

    Thanks!

  •   •   almost 10 years ago

    Hi Justin - I'm part of the team at NYPL Labs who'll be helping out at the event.

    There are a couple of sources of library data that'll be available.
    1. Our catalog API is at http://developer.bibliocommons.com/. This is the API in front of our new catalog interface http://nypl.bibliocommons.com. It's usually only for library partners only, but Bibliocommons is opening it up for developers at the event. You can sign up now, but to be approved, you'll have to mention "hackathon" in the registration. It's also got a limit of 5,000 calls per key per day, so it's not ideal for scraping, but it's good for searching, structured records, structured lists, and making lending possible.

    2. Our classic catalog records are XML records. So if you go to any records at http://catalog.nypl.org/record=b14618472~S1, and change record= to xrecord=, you'll get the underlying book record.

    3. For any big data stuff, the best bet is the OpenLibrary data feed or API. http://openlibrary.org/developers It's an amalgamation of book data from the Library of Congress and a bunch of other libraries. Couple million book records.

    If there's anything else you're interested in, let me know and I'll see what I can open up. I'll be there all weekend so I'm looking forward to meeting you.

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