We talked about something like this at the Open Library meeting last
Friday. The ol list is [log in to unmask] (join at
http://mail.archive.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ol-lib). I think of
this as a (or one or more) translate service between IDs. It's a
realization that we will never have a unique ID that everyone agrees on,
that most bibliographic items are really more than one thing, but that
since we have data about the bibliographic item we have many
opportunities to make connections even though people have used different
identifiers. So we could use an "ID-switcher" to move among data stores
and services. Is that the kind of thing you are thinking of?

kc


>
> Tim Shearer wrote:
>> Howdy folks,
>>
>> I've been playing and thinking.  I'd like to have what amounts to a
>> unique
>> identifier index to oca digitized texts.  I want to be able to pull
>> all the
>> records that have oclc numbers, issns, isbns, etc.  I want it to be
>> lightweight, fast, searchable.
>>
>> Would anyone else want/use such a thing?
>>
>> I'm thinking about building something like this.
>>
>> If I do, it would be ideal if wouldn't be a duplication of effort, so
>> anyone
>> got this in the works?  And if it would meet the needs of others.
>>
>> My basic notion is to crawl the site (starting with "americana", the
>> American
>> Libraries.  Pull the oca unique identifier (e.g.
>> northcarolinayea1910rale) and
>> associate it with
>>
>> unique identifiers (oclc numbers, issns, isbns, lc numbers)
>> contributing institution's alias and unique catalog identifier
>> upload date
>>
>> That's all I was thinking of.  Then there's what you might be able to
>> do with
>> it:
>>
>>        Give me all the oca unique identifiers that have oclc numbers
>>        Give me all the oca unique identifiers with isbns that were
>>                uploaded between x and y date
>>        Give me the oca unique identifier for this oclc number
>>
>> Planning to do:
>>
>>        keep crawling it and keep it up to date.
>>
>> Things I wasn't planning to do:
>>
>>        worry about other unique ids (you'd have to go to xISBN or
>>                ThingISBN yourself)
>>        worry about storing anything else from oca.
>>
>> It would be good for being able to add an 856 to matches in your
>> catalog. It
>> would not be good for grabbing all marc records for all of oca.
>>
>> Anyhow, is this duplication of effort?  Would you like something like
>> this?
>> What else would you like it to do (keeping in mind this is an unfunded
>> pet
>> project)?  How would you want to talk to it?  I was thinking of a web
>> service,
>> but hadn't thought too much about how to query it or how I'd deliver
>> results.
>>
>> Of course I'm being an idiot and trying out new tools at the same time
>> (python
>> to see what the buzz is all about, sqlite just to learn it (it may not
>> work
>> out)).
>>
>> Thoughts?  Vicious criticism?
>>
>> -t


--
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Karen Coyle / Digital Library Consultant
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